


Further Up and Further In

by Vera (Vera_DragonMuse)



Series: Karass [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Don Quixote by Cervantes, M/M, awkward fumbling towards enlightenment by Sam and Gabriel, discussion of literature and philosophy, fear and trembling by Søren Kierkegaard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-17
Updated: 2012-09-17
Packaged: 2017-11-14 11:13:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 24,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/514627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vera_DragonMuse/pseuds/Vera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Grieving, Sam takes a leave of absence from his law firm to sort himself out. Instead, he meets his abrasive damaged neighbor, Gabriel. They discuss faith, literature, philosophy and all the many poor life decisions they've made.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“Faith is a marvel, and yet no human being is excluded from it; for that in which all human life is united is passion, and faith is a passion.”  
― Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling 

When Sam woke up, his chest still felt like it was full of broken glass. It shattered and shifted under his ribcage as he slid out of bed and wiped a hand over his eyes. The sun was just starting to slant through the window. Barely dawn. 

Instinctively, he reached for the phone, unable to bear the silence and the cold stretch of bed next to him. He found Dean’s number and stared down at it for a long, breaking second. Dean couldn’t even have reached home yet. Dean, who won’t fly and who hated Ruby. Dean who came anyway, driving across the country in his beloved car with Cas shoved in the passenger seat like a necessary piece of luggage. Dean, who had taken one look at Sam’s face and pulled him into a tight hug, all the ugliness of the last few years fallen away between them. He let Sam cling to him as he cried, made the funeral arrangements, set Cas on cleaning duty and made sure Sam didn’t have to look anyone in the eye. With all the care Dean claimed he didn’t have, he had held Sam’s world together.

Sam couldn’t call him. Dean had his own life, nestled in a cabin in the woods that Sam had never seen. Maybe he would get to now. In a few months when breathing didn’t feel like such a chore. Carefully, Sam set the phone back down. There was no one else he could call. 

His bladder intruded on his thoughts. Obeying its demands, he went to the bathroom and tried to ignore the collection of eyeshadows and lipsticks lined neatly over the sink. Following his dry mouth, he went to the kitchen. He poured water into glasses she had chosen and stared out onto the lush backyard that had charmed them both. They had been happy when they bought this place. One side of a duplex on a pleasant street. Heaven in suburbia. 

He set the glass very carefully back in the sink. 

He had to get out of the house. The walls closed in around him, laden with her paintings and her colors. Everything in here was hers. Including him.

It was cold outside, the last bitter taste of winter clinging to the spring. He slumped further into his hoodie, bending a little to scoop up the newspaper. The headlines blurred meaninglessly under his eyes, but he tucked it under his arm anyway. 

There was a cafe at the end of their street, pumping out the smell of sugar and coffee into the air. Sam had stopped there every morning on his way to work. It had been deliciously quiet as if all the patrons had universally agreed that the first cup of coffee a day should be taken in silence. He had never had time to sit among them. 

He had all the time he needed now, two weeks of mandatory grief leave stretching before him. He ordered by rote, the girl behind the counter delivering up his latte with a perfunctory smile. When he turned to face the tables and chairs, he found them surprisingly crowded. There was only one free chair left, at an intimately small table with the other chair already occupied. The guy seated at it was reading a fat book and absently picked at a gargantuan chocolate muffin. 

“Hey,” Sam ventured, gesturing at the open chair, “do you mind?” 

The man looked up from his book, taking in Sam with a lazy unimpressed glance. He looked a little familiar, but Sam couldn’t place him. Something in the fall of his dirty blond hair and the ironic twist to his lips. With an expansive gesture at the free chair, the man returned to his book. Sam took the chair with a soft ‘thanks’, then unfolded the newspaper and tried to care about local politics. 

Occasionally, his tablemate let out a muffled snort of laughter which earned him a few glares from other tables. Sam tried to figure out what he was reading that was so funny, but the cover rested flatly against the table. It looked like an academic book, leather bound and serious. 

Sam stayed until his coffee had completely disappeared. Home couldn’t be put off any longer. He rose to leave and startled a little when his tablemate got up too. In fact, when Sam got to the door and turned right, so did the other man. It wasn’t until they got quite close to Sam’s house that he became nervous. 

“Uh, you following me home, man?” He finally asked, tongue thick in his mouth. 

The man snorted, reached into his pocket and dramatically took out a key out of his pocket. He walked up the sidewalk toward Sam’s house. All sorts of insane thing went through Sam’s head, fear coursing in a familiar bitter brew through his veins. Then, right before he would have entered Sam’s side of the house, the man turned and walked up the other set of stairs to the other door. Throwing a look of disgust at Sam, he slotted the key into the lock and went in. 

The face clicked into place. The other side of the duplex had been empty until only six or seven months ago, but that was when things had gotten so ugly it blotted out everything else. Maybe he’d glimpsed his neighbor out of the corner of his eye and even said hello to him once or twice, but nothing else had actually been penetrating by then. 

“I’m an idiot.” He told the air. Nothing contradicted him. 

The inside of his house was still hideously full of her. He veered straight to his laptop, booting it up and selecting music from his college days. Something without the tinge of recent memory. Some considerate person ( probably Cas who was forever doing the right thing in the wrong way) had left a pile of pamphlets about grief next to the computer. 

Idly, Sam picked them up and shuffled through them. They suggested group therapy (no way in hell), spending time with other loved ones (Sam’s pathetically short list had already been pointed out to him once today, thanks) and in one particularly touchy-feely one, journal writing. 

He opened a blank document and typed, 

_Dear Journal,  
The love of my life turned out to be a lying cheating wh_

He stopped. Deleted it. Tried again. 

_I miss her._

The words stared back at him. 

That was enough of that for one day. He very carefully closed the computer, headed to the couch and lost himself in Discovery channel reruns until despair took pity on him, sweeping him off to sleep. 

Some of the pamphlets had suggested staying busy and finding a daily routine. So the next morning, Sam forced himself up and down the street to the cafe. It was busy again and with wrenching displeasure, he saw that once more the only open seat was with his neighbor. The old Sam, awkward and earnest, would have tried to apologize and been hushed by everyone in the place. The more recent Sam...probably wouldn’t’ve given a shit. Sam didn’t miss that guy, hated that he’d become him even for a minute. 

After careful consideration, Sam added a chocolate croissant to his order. When he crossed the cafe, he set the plate down at his neighbor’s elbow. The man glanced up from his book, at the croissant, then up at Sam. Sam shrugged, waved vaguely at it then took the empty seat. His neighbor’s eyes narrowed, then he shrugged and bit into the croissant.

Olive branch extended and accepted, they returned to their various reading pursuits. Once more, when Sam got up to leave so did his neighbor. Maybe it was deliberate this time because when they reached the sidewalk and were out of range of the cafe, the man said with that same ironic twist to his mouth: 

“So. I know your name is Sam. And her name is Ruby. Thrilling adventures with you guys screaming through the walls, but I think I missed the amazing conclusion while I was at work. I’ve got to know: did she finally leave you or did you grow a brain and dump her ass?” 

Sam stopped walking, stopped breathing because until now everyone had known. He hadn’t had to tell anyone since that call to Dean in the dead of night under the buzzing fluorescents of the Emergency Room. 

“She died.” He choked out. 

“Shit.” His neighbor said finally, then looked up at Sam with an unreadable expression on his face. 

“Yeah.” Sam agreed helplessly then started walking again. 

Right when they reached their doors, his neighbor frowned down at the lock then said, like it was a perfectly normal thing to say to a grieving person: 

“She was an epic bitch, you know.” 

Sam stared at him, anger and despair roiling in his gut. He wanted to punch the guy. Wanted to pick up one of the quaint little paving stones that ringed their conjoined garden and throw it at him. Except...God. She really had been and no one, not even Dean who had hated her like poison, had said as much to Sam since she died. 

“Yeah.” Sam finally responded, slotting his key into the lock, “But she was my bitch.” 

They went into the house at the same time, the wall parting them and Sam had to sit down to rest a little after that. 

The rest became a nap and he woke mid-afternoon to the ringing of his phone. He grappled awkwardly at it. 

“Hello?” 

“Sam, how are you?” A soothing voice poured through the phone. 

“Mr. Scratch?” Sam heaved himself upward and ran a hand through his hair as if the senior partner could see him through the phone. “I’m fine, really.”

“No one is expecting you to be fine,” Mr. Scratch went on with perfect kindness, “terrible tragedy really. We’re all concerned about you here at the office and I just thought I’d check in. Let you know that our thoughts are with you.”

“Thanks.” Sam pressed his eye shut, heel of his hand on his forehead. “I…really appreciate that.”

“I also want to assure you that despite this tragedy, we all still think you have a lot of potential.” The last word comes out with a snap on the first ‘t’ and Sam flinched a little. He had been behaving so erratically, he had been half-sure that the mandatory grief leave was only a prelude to being fired. “When you come back, I want to talk to you about your future here at the firm.”

“Oh.” Sam looked down at his sweatpants. Had he left the house in sweatpants? 

“You’re one of us.” Mr. Scratch sighed as though Sam was a wayward child. He felt a bit like one right now. “You may even be the best of us. Take your time off, get your head on straight and come back fighting. Ok?”

“Ok. Thanks, Mr. Scratch.”

“Really, Sam. You can call me Nick, I think.” 

“Thanks, Nick.” 

“You’re welcome, Sam. Be well.”

It was a strange conversation. Downright suspicious and Sam was so very tired of being suspicious. A tide of anxiety overtook him. His hands started to shake, so he set down the phone gingerly and then curled up tight into himself. The idea of stepping back into that building, walking into the office that he’d once been so proud of brought a flood of bile to the back of his throat. Jittery and disturbed he plucked up his laptop and stared at the blank page again. 

_I don’t remember who I am anymore._

Typing it didn’t remove the feeling. If anything it made it worse, buzzing and knocking under his skin. He minimized the document and called up YouTube. Stupid human tricks kept him distracted until late enough that he could justify going to bed. He crawled into his side of the bed, tucked his pillow under his chin and tried not to think of a hand settling on his hip, drawing absent designs on his skin with soft fingertips. 

He didn’t sleep. He changed his order at the cafe the next morning, adding bitter shots of espresso. It didn’t surprise him to find that his neighbor sat at the only table with an open seat. Apparently there was assigned seating or something, everyone having long ago claimed their little tables like favored seats on a school bus. Sam didn’t even bother asking permission before sliding into his now usual seat. His neighbor favored him with only the most fleeting of glances. The same book was spread open on the table, the pages flipped a good chunk further forward. Sam had brought his own book today, a slim volume left over from a college philosophy class. It was comforting, the honest love Kirkegaard lavished on his topic. 

For the first time, he got absorbed in what he was reading and almost missed his neighbor rising out of his chair. Sam closed his book without thinking about it and they went out together onto the street. 

“You following me home, kid?” His neighbor raised an eyebrow. 

“Yeah, well.” Sam shrugged. “Hey. So. You know my name. What’s yours?” 

“You care all of a sudden?” 

Sam was suddenly aware of how much taller he was than the other man. Intellectually Sam knew he towered over a lot of people, but he had stopped noticing it a long time ago. The guy wasn’t particularly short. Sort of average really, but in that moment his neighbor seemed to shrink a little, disappearing into himself. 

“I can’t keep calling you ‘neighbor’ in my head. It makes me feel like Mr. Rogers.” Sam offered. 

“You’re a long way from sweater vests, grey hair and pleasant demeanor.” A hand stuck out in his direction. “Gabriel.” 

“Nice to meet you.” Sam shook and found Gabriel’s hand a little sticky from the cinnamon bun he’d been consuming earlier. 

“Considering what I said yesterday, I doubt that.” 

“You weren’t wrong.” Sam shrugged. “You’re lucky that I’m too out of it to punch anyone.” 

“I get the feeling you’re more of a gentle giant.” Gabriel stopped briefly at their two headed mailbox, reaching in to shuffle through flyers and advertisements. “You ever punch anyone in your life?” 

Bitterly, Sam thought about his fist colliding with Dean’s stubborn jaw. 

“Yeah.” Aware suddenly that he was just standing there awkwardly, Sam reached into his own box. At first it seemed like the same jumble of junk that Gabriel had in hand, but a letter emerged from between two flyers. The envelope was handwritten and the paper felt thick in his hand. 

“An actual letter?” Gabriel looked over at the envelope. “I didn’t know they still made those.” 

“It’s from brother’s partner. Old fashioned is sort of his middle name.” Sam ran his hand over the address in the top left corner. “He’s a photographer, probably some of his work.” 

“Yeah?” Gabriel had clearly lost interest, already winding his way back up to his side of the house. 

Sam watched him go then took the envelope back into the house. He sat down at the kitchen table and opened it carefully. There was no note inside, only a spill of photographs. At first it was only shots that he could tell Cas had taken. Arty, sun drenched scenery and odd angled portraits of Dean, clearly all taken on the sly. Then a ratty polaroid emerged from underneath, followed by other older pictures. Shots of Sam and Dean at a variety of ages: swimming, climbing rocks, pushing each other around and even one from Sam’s twenty-first birthday with both of them beyond drunk with the word ‘bitch’ scrawled over Sam’s cheek in black permanent marker. 

At the bottom of the pile was a one that was a little bent as though it had been shoved in at the last moment and unsure of its welcome. It was a picture of Cas and Dean together, sitting on a low bench and a cherry blossom tree in full bloom behind them. Neither of them were smiling, but they looked happy anyway, their knees touching a little and their eyes on each other instead of the camera. 

“Oh, Cas.” Sam touched each photo with a burn in the back of his throat. How had the man noticed the void on Sam’s wall and shelves? He must have at least guessed that Sam hadn’t willingly erased his past. 

This time he didn’t hesitate to call though he chose Cas’ number instead of Dean’s. He didn’t have much of a relationship with man, but the gesture touched him deeply. 

“Hello.” Cas answered the phone flatly and Sam could easily picture him at work, sleeves rolled up over his elbows and the acrid smell of chemicals in the air. 

“Hi, Cas, it’s Sam. I got the photos.” He ran a finger over Dean’s young face. “Thank you, man. Really.” 

“She told me she burnt them.” Cas sighed, the sound fluttering over the phone. 

“What? When? You guys talked?” He couldn’t imagine a time when their paths would have intersected. Cas had crash landed into his and Dean’s life after Ruby was already on the scene. Cas had picked up on Dean’s distaste for her and studiously avoided her. 

“I believe she had intended to reach Dean. She was rather inebriated at the time and attempting to put out the flames.” 

Sam had to swallow back against the memory. They had both been high as kites that night. It had been the spiraling beginning of the end. They had fought about something at a party and she had stormed home, leaving him with no way back. By the time he had gotten a taxi, the damage was done. The pictures were ash spread find over the oven and her face a ruin of mascara and tears. 

“I’m so sorry.” She’d flung herself at him the moment he saw the mess. “I was angry and I saw his face and I just lost it. You care about him so much, you would do anything for him and you wouldn’t for me and I know it’s ridiculous, sorry, so sorry, I love you,so sorry...” 

She must have called Dean’s house only minutes before he’d walked in the door. He wondered why she’d bothered. Or maybe she’d been too high to have a reason. 

“God, Cas, I’m sorry you had to hear that.” 

“Better me than Dean. I started collecting the pictures then, but I thought it might be prudent to wait until an easier time to send them.” There was a pause, Cas shifting in his chair. “I hope they haven’t disturbed you.” 

“No, they’re great!” He wanted to study each frame, trace back the years until he could figure out where he’d gone wrong. When happiness had melted into aching anger and fear. “You couldn’t have sent me a better gift.” 

“You’re welcome.” Cas said gravely. “Please try not to lose them again.” 

“I won’t.” He promised with equal gravity, trying to press all his truth across the distance. 

“Good. Have a pleasant day, Sam.” 

“Yeah, you too.” 

There were no frames in the house, Sam realized. Once his photos were gone, there had been no point in keeping them. Ruby had never bothered with pictures. Her family was long gone and her friends fleeting. There had been so many hints. It had taken a lot of willful blindness on Sam’s part to ignore them. 

Target wasn’t too far away. It took him a few minutes to find his car keys and even longer to dredge up the will to leave the house twice in a day. 

The store was surprisingly quiet. A few kids ran shrieking through the aisles, their mothers pushing carts and stopping to chat with each other. Sam took his time looking over his choices, wishing he’d thought to count the pictures before he left. There was money enough in the bank for frivolous purchases though. Sam had kept control of that at least, despite several bitter fights. He bought a stack of frames in varying sizes, then on a whim picked up a heavy looking lamp. It was solid and promising in his hand, the shade a practical beige. There had been no light in their front hall for months, the last lamp shattered against the wall. 

The cashier didn’t so much as glance up at him as she ran his purchases through the line. He wondered if he was becoming invisible in his grief. A stupid thought, but it lingered as he moved through the parking lot. Minivans rolled in and out around him, the sun shone and live went on without him. 

When he got home, he set his bags on the table. He could hang the pictures tomorrow, he thought. Or the day after. He started to drift from the room, but Dean’s face peered out at him from the corner of one picture. 

“Don’t look at me like that.” Sam muttered, picking the picture up idly. It was from the zoo, both of them pointing stupidly to a distant lion, ice cream smeared on their faces. “...fine.” 

It took him twice as long as it should have to remove the backings and slot pictures inside the frames. Then he had to stand in the living room for a stupidly long time, trying to figure out where to put them. Ruby had kept stacks of cheap paperbacks along the mantle, letting Sam have the built in bookshelves for his massive law tomes. He crossed to the paperbacks slowly, caressing the cover of one lurid book. She had loved terrible supernatural romances. The worse the prose, the more she had delighted in them. When he was in a bad mood, she would crack one open and read him experts until they were both laughing. 

He couldn’t remember the last time she’d done that. 

“Damnit, baby.” He closed his eyes and set the book back down. 

Then he went to get a box and piled every last one of the paperbacks into it. Putting the pictures in their place gave the whole room a different look. 

Despite his intense dawdling over the project, it was still only three in the afternoon. He reached for his laptop. The document lingered on the start bar. He ignored it and set about pounding his brain into oblivion with World War II documentaries. 

The next morning he took a shower and pulled on actual clothing. The jeans settled oddly over his hips and it took him a minute to realize he’d lost weight. Frowning, he cinched a belt around his waist. He was a little dizzy too. 

“Could I have lemon poppy seed muffin with that?” He asked at the cafe. 

Gabriel gave his muffin a bit of a look. Sam raised an eyebrow back at him in a silent ‘What?’. Gabriel huffed a sigh and turned back to his book. He must be nearly done with it now, only a handful of pages left. Sam had Kirkegaard again, paging through dense arguments and slowly demolishing his muffin down to crumbs. 

They got up together as if by mutual agreement. When they got out to the sidewalk, Gabriel clucked his tongue at him. 

“Protein, kid. If you’re suddenly interested in food again.” 

“I always have coffee for breakfast.” 

“Nope. Cheese danish on Wednesday mornings. If it was a bad night, you’d get a blondie.” 

“That’s...creepy.” Sam frowned. 

“You walked by my table every morning, hard not to notice. Bad nights, I heard through the walls. You kind of live out loud. Why blondies anyway? They’re the shameful cousins of brownies.” 

“They were my Mom’s favorite, according to Dad.” Sam shoved his hands into his pockets. 

“Man, your life is just layers of tragedy isn’t it?” There’s nothing sympathetic in Gabriel’s tone, but nothing mean either. More just a statement of fact. 

“Not really.” Sam mumbled. “Hey. What are you reading, anyway?” 

“Don Quixote.” 

“I don’t remember that book being funny.” 

“Well. You wouldn’t.” Gabriel shot him one of his now familiar wry looks. “You should lay off the Kierkegaard.”

“Why?” Sam clutched the book a little protectively. 

“Kierkegaard claims to be all about love. He thinks Abraham was filled with love when he went out to slaughter his kid. Abraham listened to God about killing Isaac because Abraham was a zealot.” Gabriel kicked idly at a loose stone, it skittered out into the street. “An angel has to come and bitchslap the guy out of it. And you know what? Isaac never spoke to Abraham again in the text. I bet that kid got one good look at dear ole Dad with his knife over his head and ran for the hills.” 

“But Isaac had faith too. I mean he had just as much faith as Abraham. He must have understood-” 

“Picture it.” Gabriel stopped at the spot where they usually split off to their separate doors. “Your fifteen, your Dad takes you on a long trip. Doesn’t tell you why, but it’s your Dad, right? So you don’t question him. You climb a mountain with him, maybe you notice a few birds. Then this man, your father, the person you trust most in the world, he ties you down. He takes out a knife and holds it over your head. So what if you get saved at the last minute? You know for the rest of your life that your Dad values some distant voice over you. He loves God more than you.” 

“Jesus.” Sam let out a shaky breath. 

“Well. No. But also kind of yes.” Gabriel reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a Babe Ruth bar. He tossed it at Sam who fumbled with it. “Contains peanuts. Plenty of protein. It’s nearly health food.” 

“You just carry these around with you?” 

But Gabriel was already gone, disappearing into his side of the house, leaving Sam out on the sidewalk staring like an idiot after him. When he got back inside, he turned to his laptop and drew up the document. 

I have a neighbor, he typed, and he’s a total dick. 

The next morning, Sam pointedly ordered an omelet and ignored the speculative look Gabriel gave him as he forked the first bite into his mouth. It melted over Sam’s tongue and filled his empty stomach. Then, mostly because he wanted to make a point, but also because he’d been enjoying reading it, Sam drew the thin volume of Kierkegaard out. 

“Seriously?” Gabriel hissed. Sam smiled at him. It hurt a little and it felt jagged, but it was a real honest to God smile. 

“Seriously.” Sam licked his finger and turned a page dramatically. Then in the a barely there whisper, he read to him, “For my own part, I do not lack the courage to think a thought whole. No thought has frightened me so far.” 

“Bullshit.” Gabriel whispered back, leaning across the table to prevent the ire of the other customers. 

“Truth.” Sam pointed a finger at him. “You don’t know me just because you heard fights through the walls. There’s a lot of things that scare me. Ideas aren’t one of them.” 

“Ideas can be a virus.” 

“Inception, really?”

“Shh!” One old lady, grey hair teased to a stiff pile on her head gave them the evil eye.  
Gabriel retreated back to his side of the table, but not without stealing a forkful of Sam’s omelette. Startled by the odd invasion. Sam didn’t protest and diligently turned back to his book. 

Two minutes later a thick crumb from Gabriel’s habitual chocolate muffin pinged off Sam’s forehead. Luckily, Sam had been trained well by years of being a little brother and only plucked it from his hair to stick it in his mouth. The next crumb caught Sam’s bottom lip and he licked it off with a faint smile. 

Twenty minutes they emerged out onto the sidewalk, little bits of muffin cascading off Sam as they walked. A cool breeze passed over them. 

“I appreciate your concern.” Sam tucked his book back into his pocket. 

“It’s not concern.” Gabriel bit out. “If you become a religious nut, I’ll have to deal with you tapping on my door every day with informative pamphlets.” 

“I don’t even believe in God.” Sam looked up, a cloud passed idly overhead. 

“No atheist is reading that book.” 

“Well I am. I like the idea of faith, I guess. I want to believe that it’s all possible. I pray sometimes for the hell of it.” 

“Sam Winchester, the praying atheist.” Gabriel’s lip curled in scorn. 

“What about you then?” 

“What about me?” 

“God, yay or nay?” 

At first it seemed that Gabriel wouldn’t answer, his body language going tight and then relaxing fraction by painful fraction. 

“Nay. Definitely fucking nay. And I still don’t see the point in reading about faith if you don’t have any.” 

“You can have faith in things beside God.” Sam couldn’t remember the last time he’d talked about this. Not with Dean, who’s idea of religion was a grudging agnosticism or Ruby, who seemed to believe simply so she had someone else to rail against. 

“Oh come on.” 

“No, I mean it.” Sam waved his hand vaguely skyward. “There’s no big man upstairs watching over us. So what? I have faith in people. I have faith that the sun will rise, even though I wish it wouldn’t right now. I have faith that life goes on whether we want it to or not.” 

“You believe in people.” Gabriel said dryly. “As a general concept? Or is it a case by case basis?” 

Sam was about to protest that of course it was people in general. Sam liked people. He trusted them. Usually. Used to anyway. He frowned. 

“Individual.” 

“That’s not faith. That’s trust. And in your case, probably a big dollop of blind lust.” 

“It wasn’t blind.” He wanted to feel angry. He could feel the place where fiery rage lived inside of him, but it was like Ruby’s death had doused it entirely. “I knew what she was, what she was like and I loved her anyway.” 

“Love. Faith. You’ve got them all tangled up.” 

They were lingering on the sidewalk down, the duplex looming over them like a third participant in the conversation. 

“No. I don’t think I do. I loved Ruby. I didn’t have much faith in her by the end. But I still loved her. Love her right now even.” Sam straightened up a little. “And you know what? As horrible as it all was at the end? I’d do it again. I’ll try again someday. You can’t live without passion.” 

“And that’s why you can’t find Don Quixote funny.” Gabriel drifted away, face turned towards his door and posture giving away nothing. “You know the giants are really windmills and you tilt at them anyway.”

“Infinite resignation.” Sam tightened his hand around the paperback, it’s spine protesting. “The last step before faith is to accept that what you want most is unattainable. You accept that, you get to that infinite resignation and then, you believe you can attain it anyway. Faith.” 

“Who wants to spend their life resigned?” The door opened under Gabriel’s hand. “Sounds like a waste to me.” 

The door shut with a click behind him. Despite having not gotten the last word, Sam didn’t feel like he’d completely lost this time. Though he wasn’t sure quite sure what they were arguing about exactly.

Bewildered, he went back into the house. He drifted up the stairs to the bedroom. The closet stood open, spilling all of Ruby’s beautiful clothes out onto the floor. Clothes she had danced in, seduced him in, worked in and slept in. Bending down he lifted up one lacy dress, held it to his nose. The scent of crushed flower petals and a trace of sweat met his nose. She had been so obscenely human. Filled the brim with energy and thirst for more. 

He got a garbage bag from the kitchen and filled it with black, red, cream and gold. The colors she had liked best and gravitated to in every store. A second bag took her shoes and lingerie. Not giving himself time to think about it, he took it all out the car and drove to the nearest Goodwill box. Thrusting them wholesale into the bins where they would be irretrievable scratched the inside of his throat raw.

“You know, Don Quixote was a perfect candidate for Kierkegaard's knight of faith.” Sam told Gabriel the next morning as they walked back to the house. “I mean, he might have been delusional, but he believed fiercely in the impossible.” 

“Did you stay up all night coming up with that one?” Gabriel sneezed into handkerchief. His nose was red and cheeks were a little flushed. 

“Just something that occurred to me.” Sam lied. “You don’t look so hot.” 

“No shit.” Gabriel blew his nose hard. “Observant too. Picked something up at school probably. Little germ bags.” 

“You’re a teacher?” 

“Kindergarten.” He rubbed the handkerchief over his nose. “Started out in the upper grades. Most people seem to think men should deal with older kids, but they’re all boring little drones already.” 

“You talk to the kids the same way you talk to me?” 

“Yes, Sir Goofus, I rip them new ones from literature every morning.” His look of disgust was lost in a sneeze. “Right after music, but before circle time.” 

“Not really what I pictured.” Sam admitted. 

“You know what they say about assumptions.” Rubbing irritably at his eyes, Gabriel bypassed the mailboxes. “I’d love to stand here and listen to whatever insane notions you’ve cooked up about me in your gargantuan head, but there’s a bottle of Nyquil calling my name.” 

“You shouldn’t have come out.” Sam scolded. “I mean, the coffee isn’t that good.” 

“Yes. Because it’s the coffee that dragged me out of bed. You’re kind of hopeless, you know?” Gabriel dragged himself up the steps. “I’m going to take full advantage of my sick day. Try not to drown in emo, ok?” 

“Yeah, sure.” 

An hour later, Sam was staring irritably at the freshly blanked document on his laptop. How many times could he write different permutations of ‘this really fucking sucks’? It was an exercise in masochism. 

He cast his mind around wildly for projects. There were still the piles and piles of paperwork, the remnants of the madness that had driven him and Ruby for so long. Evidence and photos...faked, he knew now. Just a false trail of breadcrumbs to keep him in Ruby’s palm. No. That would have to wait for another day. 

In the silence, he realized he could hear the soft muted babble of a distant television. It was the first trace of noise he’d heard through the wall of the duplex. 

He reached for the phone. 

“Sammy?” Dean answered immediately. “What’s wrong?” 

“Nothing.” He rushed to assure him. “I swear. Sorry to call so early.” 

“Damn right you’re sorry. But I was up anyway. We’ve been going for runs in the morning because Cas thinks I’m ‘treating my body in disrespectful manner’. Heh. Left him in my dust third morning in a row. So. What’s up?” 

“Do you remember the chicken soup you used to make?”

“Uh. What?” 

“You know. When we were kids? The stuff you made when I was sick.” 

“Oh. Yeah.” Dean must have been shifting the phone, a rustle of fabric. “Couldn’t ever be happy with a can like a normal kid, could you?” 

“It tasted better when you made it.” The admission settled between them, probably the nicest thing Sam had said to Dean in too many years. 

“Well. I am awesome.” Dean choked out after a long pause. “And anyway, you bitched that the canned stuff tasted like salt. You sucked at being sick. Whined like a girl.” 

“Yeah, because you making me go find ice cream in the middle of December was such a great example of manly fortitude.” 

“I had pneumonia!” 

“Whatever.” Sam snorted. “Anyway. I wanted to know what you put in the soup. My neighbor is hacking up a lung. Figure I could make it for him.” 

“Oh, man. I don’t know. Long time ago. Which neighbor? He come to the funeral?” 

“No. The guy on the other side of the duplex. I really only met him a week ago.” 

“You didn’t know the guy who lived in the other side of your house? Wait. He own that ugly green Volkswagen?”

Trust Dean to have gone to the car first. 

“Yeah, I think so.” He got to his feet, looking for a pen and paper. “Look, can you just tell me what you remember? I can probably fake the rest.” 

“There wasn’t really an exact recipe or anything. I’m not Betty Crocker, you know?” 

“Dean.” 

“Fine.” In one long breath, Dean rattled off a list of ingredients and directions so vague, Sam decided it was miracle that the stuff had ever tasted the same way twice. “That’s it.” 

“That’s enough. Thanks.” 

“Yeah. Well. Whatever. You’re welcome. What’s with this guy anyway? You playing happy homemaker after a week?” 

“No. He’s just...someone I talk to and he looked miserable. Figured I’d get out of my own head a little. Do something for someone else.” 

“Nice guy?” Dean asked like it didn’t matter to him one way or another, but Sam could practically feel the sharp edged worry. 

“No. Not really. I’m not convinced he doesn’t hate me, actually.” Sam laughed without humor. “But it turns out that I’m a little low on friends these days.” 

“So you’re going to make a guy who hates you soup? Dude. Why do you do these things to yourself?” 

“Faith. I have to believe that it’s worth it to keep trying. So. Faith.” Sam said, surprising himself with the admission. 

Dean was quiet and for a long heart stopping moment, Sam thought he had hung up. That used to be a frequent ending to their conversations, but usually it was after some serious yelling. 

“Do you remember when we met Cas?” Dean broke the silence. 

“Hard to forget.” 

Cas had been all intensity then, flashing his badge and asking for Dean’s help like his brother was someone who could save the world. Sam and Dean lived in a crummy apartment filled with water stains and Sam’s textbooks. Standing in the doorway of that rented dump, cloaked in a trenchcoat and a storm raging outside, Cas had seemed otherworldly. It had been quite an entrance. 

“He told me once that right from that moment he had faith in me.” 

“Really? I mean you threatened to stab him with a steak knife.” 

“I know, right? But he’s a weird motherfucker like that.” Dean snorted. “The thing is..after you and Ruby left town. I did some stupid shit. Doesn’t matter what and I almost lost that with him. Didn’t know how much I needed it until..... I just mean, you know. Faith is ok, Sam. If that’s all you got. Could be enough. Do me a favor though?” 

“Sure. Anything.” 

“Don’t fuck this guy. Once you stick your dick in something, it goes evil. You should get that checked out by a medical professional.” 

“You are such an immense asshole.” This time Sam’s laughter was real and it almost hurt, shaking free from pain for that instant. 

“STDs aren’t a laughing matter. I thought I taught you to always wear a raincoat.” 

“I fucking hate you.” Sam doubled over and Dean laughed with him. 

“Go make your soup, Samantha. I gotta go make sure Cas didn’t get lost on his way home again.” 

“Again?”

“Don’t ask. He gets distracted by the light in the leaves or some shit. Talk to you soon.” 

“Bye.” 

The grocery store in the middle of the day was only marginally more busy than Target had been. He lingered in the produce department even after he’d gotten what he needed. There were strawberries, glistening red and unnaturally gigantic. He picked up one container, weighing it a little in his hand. 

“Oh, get two.” An elderly lady with something suspiciously like a leer on her lips handed him a second container. “This late in the year they’re still sweet and growing locally.” 

“Ok.” He accepted the container. 

“Cut those up with some cream and your lady will eat them right out of your hand.” 

“Good tip. Thanks.” He put the strawberries in his cart. 

She kept smiling at him, so Sam edged slowly away and made a break for the cash register. Apparently his grief invisibility did not effect lusty old ladies. Because Sam’s luck was like that. 

Making soup required a lot of cutting things up. Dean had always had an unholy affinity with knives. He kept all of them in their kitchen honed far more than the execution of a few vegetables required. Sam wondered idly if Dean ever cooked for Cas. There was an uneven domestic quality to their relationship, coming in and out of focus. 

Handling a whole raw chicken was a new and interesting experience. Sam manhandled it into a pot and poured cans of broth over it, a little weirded out by the texture of it’s skin. The internet supplemented Dean’s direction of ‘cook it until it looks done’ with a suggestion of about two hours of simmering. That would carry him to about one o’clock. Normal lunch hour. 

Only two weeks ago there had never been enough time. They lived every hour in a buzzing state of high alert. Work filled most of the day and their evenings had been spent in tense planning or fighting or partying or fucking. Life lived at maximum volume.

Now two hours put him at a loss. How the mighty had fallen. 

The strawberries still sat on the counter, fragrant and plump. There were far too many of them for one person. Sam frowned at them, then turned to the internet. It made a few ludicrous suggestions, before finally giving up something that looked workable. He checked a few cabinets and they yielded up the goods. He had no idea when they had bought sugar or flour. Ruby didn’t even like to microwave her own dinner if she could get away with it. Had he picked them up in some vague idea of making cookies at some point? 

He looked at the sugar. Remembered. Cake. For her birthday last year. He’d made a chocolate cake, but they’d wound up going out instead. Getting information, getting high, it all blurred together into one long streak of nothing. He’d eaten the cake himself over a series of late night snacks after she’d taken one forkful and pronounced it too sweet. 

It didn’t matter. He had what he needed right now and that’s what he was going to concentrate on. The recipe was simple and he got to cut up strawberries with a level of viciousness that left the cutting board bleeding red juice onto the countertop. The catharsis was worth the stains. He licked the pulpy remains from his fingertips. 

The heat pouring off the oven and the smell of the soup simmering gave the kitchen an alien feel. Sam didn’t have this life with home cooked meals and the smell of onions in the air. Rather than have some kind of breakdown over something a pathetically simple as baking, Sam retreated to the living room until the first timer went off. 

It took a bit of juggling to organize a hot container of soup and still warm strawberry tart in such a way that he could ring Gabriel’s doorbell without burning himself or dropping anything. It took enough of his attention that he didn’t have time to worry about his neighbor’s reaction or if he was slowly losing his mind. 

The door opened a crack and Gabriel looked out at him, face still mask of sniffling misery. 

“Hi!” Sam said, too brightly “I made you some soup.” 

“What?” Gabriel blinked at him, uncomprehendingly. 

“Well, you looked really miserable and I have all this free time, so...soup. And a tart.” 

“Are those strawberries?” Gabriel lifted the tart out of Sam’s hand, a smile starting at the edges of his lips. 

“Yeah? This old woman at the supermarket sexually harassed me into buying them.” 

A snort of laughter escaped from Gabriel and the door swung wider. 

“You’re kind of pathetic, but you come baring food, so I’ll let it slide this once.” Gabriel walked off down the hall, leaving Sam to trail inside, closing the door with a self-conscious ‘click’. 

The house was a mirror image of Sam’s side down to the front foyer with table and lamp. Except Gabriel’s table was piled up with mail and the lamp had probably never needed replacing after being thrown at someone’s head. The living room was a collection of deep couches and a recliner that Gabriel promptly collapsed in after setting the tart down on the coffee table. 

There were books everywhere. It wasn’t quite at hoarder level as they were shoved into bookcases, but there was some serious cramming going on. The coffee table only held one or two, marked with post-it notes and crowded by empty mugs with tea bags dragging listlessly at the bottom. 

“There are bowls and spoons in the cabinets.” Gabriel waved in the general direction of the kitchen, looking a little like a used teabag himself. 

Following the unspoken command, Sam took his soup into the kitchen and began a hunt for the appropriate utensils. The cabinets were all stuffed full as the bookshelves with haphazard organization. The bowls turned out to be brightly colored plastic and the soup turned odd shades when poured into them. 

“Here.” Sam handed a bowl over to Gabriel and took a tentative seat on the edge of the couch. It sunk welcomingly under him. “You have a staggering amount of candy bars.” 

“Sweet tooth.” Taking a sip of soup, Gabriel made a soft sound of appreciation. “This is good.” 

“My brother’s recipe. And that’s not a sweet tooth amount of candy. I think it might be a cry for help.” 

“Says the man who’s too dumb to eat enough to keep his pants from falling off.” 

Sam looked down at his cinched belt then reached for his own bowl. It was as good and filling as he remembered. He could practically feel Dean’s calloused fingers pressed to his forehead, the inaccurate desperate care of a teenage boy playing mother. 

“So tell me,” Setting down his bowl and pulling a fluffy blanket more snugly around his shoulders, Gabriel eyed Sam, “how did a knight of faith wind up with a demon?” 

“She wasn’t a demon.” Sam chewed his way through a piece of chicken, all too aware of Gabriel’s eyes on him. “And its a really long, complicated story.” 

“It’s you or Judge Judy and frankly, there is only so much yelling at idiots one man can take in a day.” A strawberry chung teased out from the tart tumbled from Gabriel’s fingers to his mouth, the quick pink tip of his tongue licking away the residue. “Entertain me.” 

“You won’t believe me.” 

“Then it won’t matter what you tell me, would it? Stories I can’t believe would probably be more entertaining than petty lawsuits anyway.” 

“God, who are you?” Sam stared at him. “Is this like...fun for you?” 

“You’re the one that came over here.” Gabriel reminded him, another strawberry already in his fingers. “I figure you must be pretty desperate for company which means you have no friends to speak of, right? I saw you with her, heard some of your more rousing arguments thanks to poor soundproofing. She cut you off from everything else and you let her. So you have to talk to someone. Because people need to talk. You chose me, which I think is another show of terrible judgement on your part, but you might as well start yapping now or forever hold your piece.” 

The silence stretched out like taffy. Sam set down his bowl and collapsed backwards onto the couch, eyes fixed to the ceiling. 

“My mother died when I was a baby. The files all say accidental fire, but my Dad always said arson.” He closed his eyes against his words, unable to look at Gabriel’s reaction. “My brother and I grew up in the backseat of a car while my Dad zig zagged around the country trying to track down a man no one else believed existed. 

“Right before the end of my senior year of high school, Dad went to check up on a lead and never came back. They found his body behind a bar, looked like he got the bad end of a fight. We looked for a while, but we were both so...so fucking tired, you know? Years of searching for this faceless guy, dragged halfway to hell and back. Dean was harder to convince, but I wanted to go to college and he wasn’t letting me go anywhere without him.” 

“Big brothers are like that.” Gabriel said softly and Sam cracked open one eye to gauge his expression. Wrapped up like a mummy, Gabriel had the same neutral expression he wore while reading. “Overprotective.” 

“I didn’t mind.” At the time he’d minded quite a bit, actually. In hindsight though, the memory of Dean’s insistence of traveling to Stanford warmed Sam. “It was good for both of us. I liked school and Dean finally had time to figure out who he wanted to be. Became an EMT, a good one.

“I met this girl,” and just the the thought of Jess was still enough to rattle the fragments of glass in his chest, “and we were taking it slow. I thought maybe... it doesn’t matter anymore. We had a date night at her place, every Friday. I was supposed to be over there, but Dean had a rough day, lost someone in the ambulance that looked like Dad. I got drunk at a bar with him instead. Didn’t know until the cops came by the next day that her building had burned to the ground. Killed a lot of people, including her.” 

“God damn.” Gabriel whistled. “That’s a hell of a coincidence.” 

“Right?” Sam snorted. “Cops didn’t seem to think so. Said it was a case of bad wiring. But us? We were right back on that trail. Ready to tear shit up. With no leads. No evidence. Just our Dad’s insane rambling journal. Then this guy shows up right at our door. An FBI agent, only we find out later not even a field agent. He’s an analyst usually buried deep behind a desk, but he found a pattern that everyone else was ignoring. Fires spaced two years apart all across the country.” 

“So what? The three of you went vigilante? Roamed across the country again?” 

“That would make a better story.” Sam sighed. “No. I stayed in school, Dean kept his job and Cas got enough proof between the three of us to get a task force on it. They found the son of a bitch by the time I graduated law school. Just this sad sack bastard with no life and a chemistry degree.” 

“And then Ruby?” 

“Oh yes.” Sam rubbed a hand across his eyes. “And then Ruby.” 

“So...what? I assume you told me all that because it’s connected.” 

“It is. Look, the thing is, I’ve spent about eighty percent of my life looking for revenge, right? Who killed my Mom, who killed Jess and never relaxed about it, not really, not for one minute. Dean too. We’re bloodhounds and all of a sudden, no more scent.” He made a broad gesture with his hands. “Dean started drinking and I started making a series of shitty choices, mostly in the form of women. Dean was chasing after me half the time and washing his hands of me the next.” 

“Can’t imagine why.” The sarcastic drawl snapped through Sam, shaking him out of his reverie. 

“Hey, you asked to hear it, least you could do is keep the color commentary in.” 

“I thought I was behaving nicely.” Gabriel yawned. 

“Am I boring you?” 

“I’m sick and you filled me with food, try not to take some sleepiness personally, idiot.” Eyes were rolled and Sam felt chastened. “Go on, I promise I’m listening.” 

“Well. Then there was Ruby.” She’d been so right for him just then, all curves and reassuring smiles. All secrets and hidden sharp edges. “We didn’t even date right away. I was working in a big firm and she was a clerk there. She came to me one night when I was working late.” 

“Very cheap porno of her.” 

“Not like that.” Though maybe a part of him had been hoping that at the time. “She had information. She filed all the paperwork for the firm and she claimed they’d hired me for a reason. That the arsonist hadn’t been working on his own, it was a cover up for crime syndicate. The firm itself was corrupt all the way through.” 

“You sad fuck, you bought it didn’t you?” 

“It took her months to convince me.” Which sounded weak even to him. “She had evidence, stacks of it and goddamn...I wanted to believe it. I needed to have something to hunt. Ruby handed me Lilith on a platter. Senior partner, in bed with a crime syndicate. Lilith was the one that hired me, even though my grades had been pretty bad the last year of law school. Ruby claimed they wanted to keep me close. That they had plans for me. When I was near convinced, I told Dean about it. Showed him the papers and everything.” 

“Disaster.” Gabriel guessed. 

“Yep. I think Dean was just...tired. Done.” He remembered the closing down of Dean’s face, the heavy bowing of his shoulders as if Sam were piling bricks on top of them. “He wouldn’t even read the stuff. ‘Let it go’, he said. The fight was epic.

“Maybe we could have patched it up, but Ruby said we had to move. Had to get closer to the source. Lilith was mostly based in the Boston office. It took some doing, but we both got transferred out here.” He had been such an idiot, willingly following Ruby across the country away from the only family he had left. “I was in love with her by then.” 

“And we know love makes men fools.” 

“I meant it when I said I didn’t regret that part of it.” Sam said firmly. 

“When did you find out she was duping you?” 

“The night she died.” The ceiling had a hairline crack, disappearing into their shared wall. He wondered if it crossed into his own living room, a tiny schism bridging their homes. “We were in the middle of a fight, an ugly one, and I finally thought, ‘I can’t live like this’ and I told her that either we moved in for the kill soon or I was going back to California.”

“You put her back to the wall.” Gabriel applauded. “Didn’t think you had it in you.” 

“Thanks.” Sam drawled. “That means so much.” 

“You’re welcome.” 

“She stormed out.” He went on, too full of steam to stop. “Called me later to tell me to come by the office late. That we’d break into the files she’d always claimed were too risky to touch. And I went early. Just early enough. 

“They were talking, her and Lilith, in Lilith’s Corvette and they had the top down like they didn’t care who heard.” He could see their tender exchange of kisses between words that tore the wool from his eyes. “Didn’t even notice me pulling in a few spots away. They were laughing about me. Making plans to keep me on the hook. I stormed out of the car and they both saw me...and just for a second, Ruby looked... regretful.” 

“Wow. Really?” ‘You’re a moron’ was implied heavily, but Sam ignored it. 

“Really. She did. Lima Syndrome.” 

“She turned into a disgusting bean?” 

Sam frowned at him and Gabriel lifted one eyebrow. 

“No. It’s...reverse Stockholm Syndrome.” 

“You’re comparing your grand affair slash conspiracy theory to a hostage situation?” 

“Do you have a better metaphor?” 

Silence settled in, uneasy and tense. 

“It just seems a bit...much.” Gabriel admitted. 

“And you didn’t have to live it. I told you it was unbelievable.” Sam ran his hands through his hair. “You can turn on Judge Judy if you want.” 

“How did she die?” The question was nearly kind. 

“Please don’t make me-” He cut himself off because Gabriel wasn’t making him do anything. He was just watching with burnished dark eyes and not a trace of judgement in his face. “Lilith. She saw how angry I was. She peeled out of the parking lot and out into the road, laughing. And this truck. God. The guy had no way of seeing them. 

“The coroner assured me they died on impact. And I know what it sounds like. I lived this cheap movie, ok?” 

“Ok, Sam.” That tart was almost entirely gone and the tips of Gabriel’s fingers were stained red. “That’s your story.”

“No other one I can give.” 

Gabriel nodded as if that’s what he’d expected. He reached for a tissue, blew his nose and then leaned back in his chair. 

“I’m one of twelve kids.” He said. 

“What?” 

“Yeah, I know, right? Mom wasn’t big on the birth control. Wanted all the kids God chose to give her.” Gabriel ignored the puzzled that Sam shot at him. “Dad ran the family like an army. Good training because we’re a military family from way back. Everyone joins ups.” 

“Except you?” 

“Including me.” Gabriel snorted. “I was an obedient son. Then the war came and half of us shipped out. Left the younger ones at home with Mom and Dad, received our care packages in the mail and carried out our duty.” 

“I can’t imagine you at war.” Sam winced as soon as the words came out. “Sorry.” 

“Don’t be. I spent a lot of time fashioning myself a new life.” Gabriel gestured broadly at the house. “You come back different sometimes. I came back shaky. Every little sound put me on edge. Mike and Luc, both of them got a taste for it. Mike volunteered for another tour and Luc went to war with our Dad. No peace to be found in any room of the house” 

“I used to fight like that with my father.” 

“No.” Gabriel said harshly. “You didn’t. This was...blood was shed. One of my brothers got between them during one fight and Luc broke his jaw. Mike came home on leave and between the two of them, they almost burned down the house. The younger kids were terrorized. 

“The day the guns came out, I called CPS. Stayed until I was sure all the little ones were safe and then I took the first flight out to Boston.” Idly, Gabriel picked at the crust of the tart. “Mike went back overseas. Dad and Luc both disappeared off the map. I went to school, got a job and pretended that I never had a family ever since. Or they’re pretending they never have me. Either works.” 

“I’m so sor-” 

“Don’t.” Gabriel nibbled on a piece of crust, crumbs dusting over his blanket. “Point is that weird shit happens. I get that more than most people might. Lives can sound like cheap movies. Yours may be more John Grisham to my Lifetime Special, but it adds up the same way.” 

“What the hell Lifetime specials have you been watching?” Sam blurted.

“Why? You want to recommend a favorite?” The sliver of a smile told Sam that the quip was better than whatever else he could have said. 

They didn’t talk about their pasts again. Instead they waste the afternoon comparing their terrible television tastes and come up with a mutual appreciation for Storage Wars. It was easy after that to find a few episodes on Gabriel’s Netflix account and watch them until it went dark. 

“Get out of my house.” Commanded Gabriel when the shadows grew long. “I have to go be respectable tomorrow.” 

Sam took his empty pie tin, tupperware and the copy of Don Quixote with him. Dishes went into the sink and the book with him up to bed. When he reached the part where the delusional knight struck out for the windmills, he laughed and the glass in his chest ceased to exist for a brief instant as the sound spilled into the dark.


	2. Chapter 2

“You look like someone I used to see at the cafe.” Gabriel commented wryly as they exited said cafe. “He didn’t stay for breakfast though. Just grabbed coffee and ran.” 

“First day back to work.” Sam smoothed the lapel of his suit, pleased that it still fit. He’d gained some of the weight back over the last week of his leave. Mostly thanks to Gabriel, who had started inviting him over for dinner. Their friendship still had a stilted quality, more insult than care. 

“And you condescended enough to the little people to stop and eat?” 

“You’re not getting rid of me that easy. Now that I’m not up to all hours of the night, I can afford some time for breakfast.” Sam smiled. “Wouldn’t want to miss our silent bonding time.” 

“I’m touched. Possibly in the head. Also your tie is crooked.” 

“Is it?” Sam reached up to fix it. 

“You’re making it worse.” Gabriel bat his hands out of the way. “Let me.” 

Sam stood patiently still while Gabriel fussed over the fall of his tie. When it was settled properly, Gabriel gave it a last pat. A fleeting touch that made up the entirety of their physical interaction to date. 

“Take care, my knight of faith.” 

There was no laughter in Gabriel’s face and Sam’s breath caught in this throat for a fraction of a second. Then Gabriel took a step back, shot him a wink and sauntered back towards the house as if it had never happened. 

The touch of Gabriel’s hand to Sam’s chest lingered with him as he drove the familiar way to his office. To his left the city loomed up grey and distant on it’s backdrop of foggy water. He watched the rising sun set the windows of a skyscraper glittering and tried to remember when he’d enjoyed this time in the car. 

He parked behind the building, instead of the more commonly used front lot. There were limits to what he could tolerate. The warren of cubes were only just waking as he walked by, early appearances of paralegals and secretaries clutching mugs of coffee. A few of them offered him weak smiles or soft condolences. 

The little cramped office that he’d earned through honest sweat, despite his covert mission, smelled of dust and disuse when he came in. There was no window to open and he didn’t care to leave the door propped, so he resigned himself to the smell. A stack of folders awaited his attention his desk and his e-mail started to ping pathetically as soon as the computer was booted up. 

It was as if he had never left. Like Ruby was still in her cubicle with the others and they could text under their desks about their plans for the night. It took a few deep breaths for him to master himself and then he set about doing his job. 

Midway through his email was a message from Nick’s secretary informing Sam that Nick had been called away on business, but would like to talk to Sam as soon as he came back late next week. Sam sent a quick message back confirming the appointment, then returned to his tasks. A trickle of unease flirted at the back of his mind like an uncomfortable itch that he couldn’t scratch. He ignored it. No more espionage. No more conspiracy. There was only work and the paycheck. 

By the end of the first day, Sam had had an epiphany. He thought about it as he picked up Thai food, drove home and knocked on Gabriel’s door without so much as peeking into his own side of the house. 

“How was work?” Gabriel asked dryly as he opened the door. There was a smear of bright green paint across the back of one hand and more under his nails. 

“I had an epiphany.” Sam pushed passed him, ignoring Gabriel’s annoyed flailing. 

“You had a deep thought? I’m shocked.” 

“I got you mango lassi.” Sam shoved the styrofoam cup at him and hid a smile as Gabriel’s sarcastic scowl turned to a bright grin. “And a mountain of spring rolls.” 

“Was your epiphany finally realizing I can eat as much as I want and maintain my svelte physique? Because I’ve been trying to tell you that.” Already sucking at the container of thick liquid, Gabriel used his free hand to take down plates. 

“No. My epiphany is that my job is really boring and pointless.” Teasing a spring roll from the wax paper wrapper, Sam bit into morosely. “All I do is help one big company screw over another company with vagaries in contracts. It’s always been boring. It’s always been pointless and I was too caught up in drama to notice.” 

“So quit.” Gabriel upended a package of thick noodles onto his plate. 

“What else would I do?” 

“You’re young, not completely stupid and have shown the ability to learn new skills. Do what you want.” 

“The money is good though.” Sam thought about his first paycheck at his old firm. He’d taken Dean out to a ridiculous dinner, buying him drink after drink. The waitress was convinced they were celebrating their anniversary and brought them a free dessert that coaxed obscene noises from Dean’s throat. It had been horribly embarrassing and one of the best nights of Sam’s life. 

“You’re going the easily bought path? Not what I would have pictured for you.” 

“It’s probably losing Ruby and the whole collapse of my life goals.” Sam groaned into the spring roll. “I’m depressed and that’s making it all seem worthless.” 

“I think it being worthless is making it seem worthless.” 

“Your logic hurts. I think you like hurting me.” 

“Sam, I can safely say that the universe as a whole gets a hardon for your tears.” Gabriel patted his hand sympathetically. “Tough luck, kiddo.”

“Next time, I’m just bringing ice tea. Unsweetened ice tea.” 

“You’re a heartless man.” Taking a sip of his lassi, Gabriel finally settled into a chair and started eating. “Fickle and heartless.” 

It’s pleasant, sitting at Gabriel’s table and being mocked mostly good naturedly. The food and the company wrapped around Sam and all the hard parts of the day give way to contentment. He clung to that, riding the feeling out into the next day’s dull work and the next. Every morning he met Gabriel at breakfast and wandered into his house at night like a stray cat. 

Then in the middle of a meeting on Friday morning, Sam’s phone buzzed in his pocket. For a brief breathless second he thought it was Ruby. Reality sank in and his stomach tied itself in an ugly knot around his last cup of coffee. When everyone was engrossed in the powerpoint presentation or at least, had their eyes in that general direction, Sam snuck the phone from his pocket. It’s a number he doesn’t recognize. 

_You busy on your lunch break? Need a favor. -G_

_How did you get my number?_ Sam texted back furiously. 

_Used your phone to call mine when you were bitching about the Red Sox last night. You don’t even like baseball. Beginning to think complaining is your natural state._

_You violated my phone._

_Case in point. Look, I left my reading glasses on the table this morning. Could you bring them over?_

It would take twenty minutes to drive back to the house, another ten to get to Gabriel’s school and then twenty more back to work. Feasible for his lunch hour though he generally never took the whole thing. 

_Fine. Where’s your spare key?_

_On your key ring._

Bewildered, Sam took his keys out of his pocket and sure enough there was a key hanging on it that hadn’t been before. A bright green ‘G’ had been painted on it. 

_Did you pick my pocket?_

_Is it really picking if I put something in it instead of taking something out?_

By now the presenter was winding down. Sam only had enough time to type quick ‘ttyl’, before discussion started up around the table again. His phone buzzed again in his pocket, but he ignored it, contributing something that sounded thoughtful to the conversation. 

Back in his office, he put on his jacket and checked the phone. 

_You crazy kids and your acronyms. I’ll assume that means you’re coming. See you soon._

Driving away from the office in the middle of the day was liberating. He rolled down the window and caught a sweet spring breeze through the windows. A memory hit him like a sledgehammer. An endless wave of green fields, him slumped against the passenger side of the Impala and Dean driving, humming along with the radio rumbling low and indistinct. 

Sam wanted to be there. He wanted to go back to that endless point in time where they weren’t anywhere really. Just quietly together and the smell of fresh air filling up all the empty spaces. They had been good like that, before Dad had gotten himself killed and Sam applied for college. Before life had turned into one ridiculous drama after another. 

He rubbed his thumb over the new key, the slightly raised ‘G’ tickling over his skin. He tried to imagine Gabriel’s quick fingers licking into Sam’s pocket, smooth and easy. He must have had the key ready, marked ahead of time. The gesture would have been nearly sweet if it weren’t for the odd delivery. 

Reaching the house, he jogged up the steps and got the door open. A lipstick red snakeskin glasses case was sitting on top of a stack of junk mail. He smiled down at the case, perversely pleased by it’s ostentatiousness. Sliding them into his pocket, he glanced down the hall. He resisted the urge to go poking around, but it was a near thing. 

The drive to the school was short. Gabriel had said that he usually walked and Sam could imagine him taking his time down the verdant street, the battered leather messenger that Sam had seen by the front door over his shoulder. 

He parked in the lot, the sound of riotous children pouring out from the playground. Walking in the front doors, he was assaulted by sense memory: the yellowing tile, the smell of industrial disinfectant and lukewarm air of a building with no air conditioning in the middle of spring. A sheet of 8 x 11 paper informed him in cheery Comic Sans that the Visitor Check-In was inside the front office. 

A middle age woman sat behind a desk inside, phone lodged between her neck and ear. She gave him a quick once over.

“Can I help you?” She asked, pushing the mouthpiece away from her face. 

“I’m here to visit a class? Dropping off a pair of forgotten glasses.” He waved the case a little and her face broke into a wide smile. 

“You must be Sam. Gabriel talks about you all the time.” She pushed a clipboard at him. “He called ahead to say you’d be coming, just go ahead and sign on the line. His class is the third one on the left.” 

“Thanks.” He flushed, trying to imagine what Gabriel might say about him. Probably nothing flattering. He signed in a quick messy sprawl. 

The door to Gabriel’s classroom was covered in crayon drawings and a small plaque denoting ‘Mr. Lyesmith’s Kindergarten Class’. Sam pushed it open cautiously, then stopped dead in the doorway. 

Sunlight filtered in through old warped windows and small children sat around low tables in a jumble of noise. Gabriel sat serenely in their midst, in a chair far too small for any grown man. There was a child plastered to his side, a fresh band-aid on her forehead and another with their foot in his lap as he tied a shoe. The light caught the blonde streaks of Gabriel’s hair and his lips, usually held in a hard line when Sam was being an idiot, curved in a soft indulgent smile. 

In his element, Gabriel was perfect. He looked happy and competent. The children all turned to look at him as he gave instruction, still and eager to listen. Sam could have stood in the doorway all day just watching him. 

It was too soon after Ruby, Sam thought, even as his still wounded heart thudded unevenly in his chest. Gabriel didn’t even like him that much, only seemed to tolerate him most of the time. It was a foolish, useless thing for him to fall in love. 

He thought of dear Kierkegaard, talking about his knight of faith who loved the unattainable princess and said: "I believe nevertheless that I shall get her, in virtue, that is, of the absurd, in virtue of the fact that with God all things are possible."

Sam didn’t believe in God, but he had faith. And Dean had said faith was enough. 

In the span of two minutes, standing in the doorway of a classroom, Sam let himself fall in love. 

“There’s a man at the door!” One little girl called out and Gabriel finally looked up. 

Their eyes caught and held across the room. Some of Sam’s new emotion must have shown on his face as Gabriel studied him closely, eyes widening briefly. 

“Children,” he announced getting to his feet, “this is my friend, Sam. Say hello.” 

“Hello!” A chorus greeted him. 

“Hi.” He waved a little at them, flummoxed. 

“If everyone cleans up, we’ll be able to have storytime. Maybe Sam will read us our book today.” 

The kids set about tidying immediately while Gabriel crossed to Sam. 

“I have to get back to work.” He protested, handing over the glasses case. 

“It won’t take long. The books are short.” Gabriel’s smile turned shark-like. “They like new people. You don’t want to disappoint a room full of kids, do you?” 

Sam never went back to work. He dutifully read his way through ‘Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs’ then listened to Gabriel teach a lesson on plants using tiny bean sprouts. The kids all pressed a bean into soil and Sam wound up helping with that too. His suit jacket was off in the first half hour and his shirt sleeves rolled up the next. Then one of the girls asked him to draw a dog that she could color in. Apparently his meager art skills were up to snuff and sheets of paper were brandished at him from all sides. An offering of a plastic beaded bracelet wound up on his wrist and a scented sticker pressed to the crease of his slacks. 

“Mr. G, can we have a story before going home?” Someone called out as Sam washed his hands in the too low sink. 

“You had one already today.” Gabriel reminded them as he sorted through the marker bin, looking for a purple that wasn’t dried out. 

“But it wasn’t one of your stories.” Someone whined. 

“Alright fine, get your bookbags together so everyone’s ready for buses and then meet me on the rug.” 

Sam busied himself putting the newly planted beans along the back wall where they had some hope of catching sunlight. He listened as Gabriel told the children, 

“Many years ago, before your grandparents were even born, there was a god of thunder named...” 

“Thor!” The children shouted. 

“Just so. And Thor had a wife named Sif. She was a warrior just like him and fought bravely in endless battles. She also had long golden hair. Thor loved his wife and he thought her hair the most beautiful thing in the world. Frequently, he told her how much he loved her hair and bragged about it’s golden beauty to anyone that would listen. But there was another god, a mischievous one, named...” 

“Loki!” They cried out with more relish. 

“Exactly. Loki thought that Thor was foolish to have a woman as brave and smart as Sif, but to treasure her hair above all else. He thought to teach Thor a lesson. So while Sif slept by a river bank under his spell, Loki cut off all her hair. Which I think we can agree was not very nice.

“Sif woke up and found her hair gone. She cried and hid from her husband, afraid he wouldn’t love her without her hair. Do you think he still did?” 

“Yes.” One little girl said very solemnly. “You don’t love people just cause they have nice hair. That’d be stupid.” 

“You’re right, very stupid. Thor did still love her very much, but he was very angry and decided to punish anyone that would be so mean. He went to all the other gods and asked them who had dared to cut off his wife’s hair. None of them would admit it. Odin stepped forward and declared it must be Loki since he was the only one mischievous enough to do such a thing. 

“‘I’ll kill him!’ said Thor. ‘No, you won’t.’ said Odin. ‘Killing is a bit of an overreaction. Loki is useful and knows many tricks. Perhaps he can even return Sif’s hair to her.’ Odin would not let Thor go look for Loki until he agreed not to kill him. It took Thor three days and three nights to find Loki, but when he did, the god only laughed and said, ‘I cannot grow hair and even if I could, it would not be on her head!’. Thor brandished his hammer and threatened until Loki agreed to try and find a way to fix what he had done. 

“Now Loki knew he had to go into the earth. This is not something you or I or even Thor could do. Only Loki could go under the dirt and down into the caverns to meet with the dwarves and gnomes. He was the only god that treated them politely, you see, and they liked him. He promised them many things if they could make him a beautiful helm worthy of a princess. Who knows what a helm is?” 

Twenty faces looked at him blankly. 

“It’s a helmet.” Sam offered. He’d drifted over to the circle, leaning against a bookcase. “The kind you would wear into battle.” 

“Like a knight?” The boy at Sam’s feet asked. 

“Just like a knight.” Gabriel agreed, winking at Sam. “You see, Loki knew that Sif loved being a warrior more than she loved being beautiful. When he brought the helm to Thor, he said, ‘Take this to Sif and ask her if it is a good apology.’ ‘This will not restore her hair.’ Thor complained. ‘It was Sif who I offended. I don’t care if you don’t like it.’ said Loki. Still angry, Thor brought the helm to Sif, ‘This is Loki’s poor apology.’ She took the helm from him and set it on her head. She knew that it was a great helm, fit for the bravest and best warrior. ‘This is what I wanted.’ she told Thor. ‘A crown of gold. My hair always got in the way when I was slaying dragons. This is much better.’ And on his wife’s head, Thor decided the crown was almost as beautiful as her hair had been.” 

“Did Sif see Loki?” One of the boy’s asked. 

“Not that time, but they fought a great beast together not long after. That’s a story for another day.” 

“Red and Blue bus.” A voice crackled over the loudspeaker and the kids departed in a flurry of backpacks until it was only Sam and Gabriel left. 

“You going to be in trouble?” Gabriel asked, shuffling through a pile of worksheets. 

“Probably.” Sam grinned. “You know, the way I remember that story, Loki cheated the gnomes into making Sif a golden wig” 

“Sounds like a miserable interpretation. Norse women didn’t sit at home combing their locks.” 

“And Loki wasn’t much of a lesson teacher. He was a malicious prankster.” 

“History is written by the loser.” 

“Well, yeah, but I don’t think that’s got anything to do with mythology.” 

“Doesn’t it?” Gabriel pushed in chairs around the table, tidying up the loose ends of the day. “Myths come from somewhere. Who are you to say that there was never a Loki or a Thor?” 

“So you don’t believe in God, but you believe in myths?” 

“I didn’t say that.” Gabriel shrugged loosely. “But there’s definitely no one left to say what the stories were meant to mean. So I tell them the way I think they should be told to a group of impressionable young minds.” 

“You’re a good teacher.” Sam told him, trying to avoid a slippery slope of bickering. “The kids seem to love you.” 

“They’ll forget all about me when school ends and they move up that ladder.” Gabriel didn’t seem upset by the idea. “It’s a good job though. You ready?” 

“Sure.” Sam gathered his suit jacket and checked his phone. No missed calls and no urgent e-mails. No reprimands either or a request for an explanation. Maybe no one had noticed his absence. He usually left his door closed in the afternoon after all. “Want to get something to eat?” 

“It’s only four in the afternoon.” 

“I didn’t get lunch. Too busy running errands for you.” 

“Poor giant. You must be starving.” Gabriel said mock sympathetically. 

“You coming to get drinks?” A pretty woman with long red hair bounced up to Gabriel’s side. “We’re going to Rocco’s.” 

“Maybe.” Gabriel glanced over at Sam. “You want to come?” 

“Oh! Sorry.” The woman reached out a hand. “You must be Sam. I’m Anna.” 

“I’m beginning to get a complex. Am I famous and no one told me?” Sam shook her hand. 

“Gabriel talks about you all the time. At first we thought you might be a product of his deranged imagination because he said you were eight feet tall.”

“Thanks, Anna.” Gabriel frowned. “That’s really-” 

“He also said you were brilliant which I think is great because he’s always whining that none of us can offer a stimulating enough conversation.” Anna said, sarcasm thick in her voice. “So it’s good to meet someone who’s up to his standards.” 

“Actually, I thought he hated me.” Sam offered. “I get the feeling it’s sort of a pity thing, him spending time with me at all. You know the way you humor a dog when it tries to act like people.” 

“I am right here.” Gabriel said plaintively. 

“So drinks?” Anna said brightly. 

“Absolutely.” Sam agreed. 

The bar was atrocious. There was red velvet on the walls, trimmed with gold tassels and pervasive smell of desperation. It was also already packed at five on Friday. A gaggle of young women waved at Gabriel as soon as they entered the bar. They buzzed around him like bees to honey, talking about lesson plans and gluesticks. 

“He’s popular.” Sam said neutrally to Anna. 

“He’s the only single man most of them known.” She rolled her eyes and leaned over the bar to snag a bottle of whiskey. The bartender turned to bark at her then stopped abruptly. 

“On the tab then?” The bartender asked. 

“Yep!” 

She grabbed three glasses and poured Sam a generous measure into one. Without looking, she passed another glass over her shoulder right into Gabriel’s waiting hand. He disappeared back into the crowd of women. 

“Tell me about yourself.” Anna demanded. 

“Not much to tell. I’m pretty boring.” Sam lied. 

“Gabriel said you’re a lawyer. You look kind of young.” 

“I’m 28.” He sipped the whiskey and it burned all the way down. The sensation was a little too good. After another sip, he set the drink aside and resolved to leave it there. “I’ve only been practicing a few years. Mostly contract law. How long have you been teaching?” 

“Forever it seems like.” She knocked back her drink and filled the glass again. “I was that stupid kid who thought it’d be great to have summers off. No one warns you that you have the summers off because the job is so fucking exhausting.” 

Sam liked Anna. She was funny, had a nice smile and seemed to like him right back. They talked amiably as she systematically demolished the bottle, occasionally topping up Gabriel’s glass when it arrived over her shoulder. 

“I pictured you differently.” She said around her fifth full glass. Her eyes had gone glassy, her limbs loose and her perch on the seat precarious, but her words stayed crisp and on topic. 

“Eight feet tall?” He joked. 

“That’s Gabriel. Everything is legend.” She snickered. “But not what I meant. He talks like you matter. No one matters to him.” 

“That’s...harsh.” Sam wished he could blame the alcohol for the burning of his cheeks, but his glass still sat mostly full on the bar. 

“It’s true.” She said firmly. “He likes the kids ok and he likes attention, so he puts up with that.” 

She made a wide gesture at the mob still encircling Gabriel like he was the last fish in a shark infested ocean. 

“He doesn’t like me.” Sam pointed out. “He tells me I’m an idiot on a regular basis.” 

“You ARE an idiot.” She informed him gravely. “That’s a shame. I thought you were smart up until now. Are you listening to me?” 

“Intently.” 

“Look. He doesn’t see people properly. We’re...shadows. Passing entertainment. He looks at you and he sees you and that’s...weird. Very weird. I didn’t think he was capable of it.” 

“I think you’re drunk.” He said instead of a thousand other things that crowded his tongue. 

“Anna!” Gabriel emerged from his harem, hair mussed and arms spread wide. “Tell this doubter about the monsters she’s inheriting next year. She doesn’t believe me when I say they were the worst class in the history of teaching.” 

“You told me they were angels.” Anna said mildly. “You lied to my face. Worst first grade class ever.” 

“It was to soften the blow.” Gabriel assured her, patting her arm before offering up his empty glass to her. “You would have gotten them regardless.” 

“I hate you.” Anna poured him another drink. “Fiery loathing.” 

“Yes, dear.” Saluting her with the glass, Gabriel turned on Sam. “Having a good time?” 

“Anna is telling me all your secrets.” Sam said lightly. 

“She doesn’t have any worthy of blackmail material.” Moving toward the bar, Gabriel swayed a little. Instantly, Sam shot an arm to steady him. With a laugh, Gabriel collapsed into the touch until he was leaning against Sam’s side. 

“Only because you have no shame.” Anna retorted, but she sounded a little distant from Sam now. He was too busy cataloging the warm press of Gabriel against him and the faint scent of his shampoo. 

“What use is shame?” And Sam recognized the lecturing tone all too well. “It’s a tool our parents use to keep us from doing what society says we shouldn’t.” 

“Not always.” Sam contended, unable to stop himself. “Sometimes it’s our empathy. I mean if I say something hurtful to you then feel ashamed, it’s not because my Dad once smacked my hand for calling my brother an idiot. It’s because I know how it feels to hurt and I don’t like making someone else feel that way.” 

“That’s guilt! A horse of an utterly different zebra.” The retort lost some of it’s sting when Gabriel sagged further against Sam, one hand gesturing wildly. “Guilt is also annoying, but at least it’s internally regulated. Shame is what you feel when society tells you that you’ve been naughty.” 

“I think you’re splitting hairs.” Sam complained. “Guilt and shame go hand and hand.” 

“Oh. My. God.” Anna said with a hybrid of a laugh and a snort. “You two are ridiculous! Get out of my bar, you’re harshing my buzz.” 

“I should get Sam home, anyway.” Gabriel set his glass down on the bar, reaching across Sam to do so. “He turns into a pumpkin at eleven.” 

Sam, who had regularly been out until three or four in the morning and strung out on things a lot less innocent than liquor just a few months ago, only nodded.

“Boring.” Anna kicked loosely at Gabriel, connecting with his upper thigh. “You’re abandoning me to your hen house.” 

“You’re a fox like me, I think you’ll be fine.” Grumbling and rubbing at his leg, Gabriel started for the front. Considering Sam had driven him there, he figured that was his cue to exit. 

“It was nice meeting you.” He said to Anna. 

“Likewise.” She slumped closer to the bar, propped up on her elbows around Gabriel’s abandoned glass. One of the woman detached from the group to wrap an arm around Anna’s shoulders, so Sam didn’t feel too bad leaving her on her own. 

Outside, Gabriel stood on the sidewalk face turned up to the night sky. His hands were buried in his pockets, protection against the unseasonably cool night. Sam came up next to him and looked upwards, trying to see whatever it was that had caught Gabriel’s attention. 

“Mike was a stargazer.” Gabriel didn’t look at Sam. “He taught us all the constellations.” 

“I used to know them. I’d sit out on our car and pick them out from a book.” Sam offered, aware that some fragile exchange was taking place. 

“I always thought it was weird. Being absorbed in something so far away.” 

“Easier than having to live where I was at the time, I guess. Can’t speak for your brother, but there were days I wanted to be anywhere, but stuck on this planet.” 

“What about now?” Gabriel finally tore his gaze away and for someone staggering their way out of a bar a few moments before, he looked remarkably sober. “You must want escape every day.” 

“No.” Said Sam, before he could even really think about it. “I’m good here, right now.” 

Someone inside shouted something, sending up a wave of laughter that petered out from under the door. Gabriel winced, swaying a little. 

“You ok?” 

“Fine. Let’s just go home.” 

When they arrived back, it was clear that the full impact of a quarter bottle of whiskey on a not particularly large man had hit. Gabriel leaned heavily against the car when he got out. 

“The stars are spinning.” He mumbled. 

“Awesome.” Sam sighed. “Let’s get you into bed.” 

Their height difference made the walk interesting. They managed though and Sam got Gabriel up the stairs without any major mishaps. He’d never seen the bedroom before. The bed was ridiculously oversized, even pushed into one corner it filled most of the room. A heap of pillows covered the side pressed to the wall until the whole thing resembled a nest more than a bed. As he set Gabriel on the edge, he could feel the sheets soft as velvet under his hand. 

“You are such a hedonist.” He chided. 

“There’s nothing wrong with enjoying comfort.” Gabriel toed off his shoes. “The world is made of sharp edges. No one else is going to soften them for us.” 

“You’re a wordy drunk.” 

“Thanks. For coming tonight.” Gabriel said through a yawn, then fell backward onto the bed. There was nothing seductive about him in his button down and khakis, hair haloed out behind his head. Still Sam felt the first tendrils of want twitching up from his groin. 

“No problem.” He started to back out of the room. 

“Don’t run away. Then I’ll be drunk and lonely.” Struggling back up this elbows, Gabriel looked blearily at his alarm clock. “It’s not even seven o’clock.” 

“I’m still hungry.” Sam reminded him. 

“Bring us up something then. My kitchen is yours.” Gabriel collapsed back down. “Something microwavable.” 

“Yes, your majesty.” 

He really was starving though. Rooting through Gabriel’s packed cabinets and fridge, he found the saving blue box and package of ground beef that still looked good. There had been a winter where Dean and him had lived off of hamburger macaroni and cheese. Reminders of his childhood were everywhere today. He took it as a sign to make the yellow and brown mess, snacking on a Twix bar as he cooked. 

Half-expecting Gabriel to have passed out, he was pleasantly surprised to find him propped against his ridiculous mound of pillows and a book open on his lap. 

“Gearing up for our next argument?” Sam offered up the bowl and Gabriel seized it eagerly. 

“That smells amazing. Perfect drunk food.” He dug his fork in. “And no. Unless you think there’s a lot of profound discussions to be had about Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.” 

“Bistromatics.” Sam said immediately, the scene sticking out prominently in his mind. “I loved that part.” 

“That’s from Life, the Universe and Everything.” 

“Hm. I haven’t read them in years.” 

“Did you ever see the movie?” 

“No, must have come out during the law school years. I missed a big chunk of popular culture.” 

Of course there was a television and dvd player in Gabriel’s bedroom and the DVD was one of the many stacked haphazardly among the bookshelves. They watched it, sitting side by side on Gabriel’s bed. It was funny in parts, but also melancholy just as Sam had remembered the books. 

When the metal hands started slapping people, Gabriel let out a loose, easy laugh. It shivered over Sam’s skin like a promise. The ending wasn’t what Sam remembered, but he liked it anyway. 

“I should get going.” He said when the credits came up. 

“Probably.” Gabriel blinked sleepily at him, then sighed. “What did Anna tell you about me?” 

“Nothing important.” Sam smiled at him. “Really.” 

“She’s the only one of those harpies I can stand.” 

“She’s a good friend to have.” 

“Oh, we’re not friends. I’m not the kind of person that has friends.” 

They never bothered turning on the lights, so it’s too dark for Sam to make out Gabriel’s expression. Maybe he was only being sarcastic or bitter as he could be sometimes. Or maybe he really meant it and it was a lead in for Sam to go.

“You’re my friend.” Sam said anyway. “Only one I have right now.” 

“That’s very sad.” Gabriel whispered into the darkness. “For both of us.” 

“Why?” 

“Do you know why I could take your keys and phone without you noticing?” 

“Uh, because I’m oblivious to most external stimuli when I’m ranting?” 

“That helps, but no. When I left home...I told you I went to school, right?” 

“Right.” 

“I did other things before that. I didn’t have money or a direction. I was beat to hell, PTSD and drowning in guilt. I did a lot of terrible things. I got good at stealing. Tried to do it only to people who deserved a lighter wallet.” Gabriel looked down at his lap, hair obscuring his face. “We’re a pair, you and me. The thief and the addict.” 

“You don’t steal now and I’ve been clean for four months.” Sam said firmly. “We don’t have to define ourselves with old words.” 

“What would you suggest then?”

“I dunno. Can’t we just be two people? Fucked up around the edges and trying to be better? What does it matter what we call ourselves?” 

Gabriel didn’t look up, but he did reach out, fumbling in the dark for Sam’s hand. It was decidedly not heterosexual to sit in the dark and hold hands with another man, even if Gabriel was still a little drunk. They did it anyway, Gabriel’s thumb drawing circles over Sam’s knuckles. 

“You should sleep.” Sam whispered, afraid to break the moment, but concerned by the droop of Gabriel’s shoulders. “Come over when you wake up tomorrow. I’ll make you my patented hangover breakfast.” 

“I can’t eat when I’m hungover.” Slowly, Gabriel retreated, hand returning to his own lap. “Maybe lunch though. Ok?” 

“Ok.” 

Impulsively, Sam crossed the distance between them to kiss Gabriel’s forehead. It was embarrassing and stupid, but he didn’t regret it. Gabriel watched him in the dark, eyes glittering in the dull light of the television. 

When Sam made it to the relative safety of his own bedroom, he pressed his forehead to the wall and tried to breath. The world refused to settle around him, quaking and jumping as if he were the one who had downed all that whiskey. He was all too aware that Gabriel’s bedroom must lie on the other side, only plaster and wood between them. 

Sleep came in reluctant snatches that night. Sam’s mind turned endlessly against him, calling him callous for moving on from Ruby too soon and trying to ruin the only friendship he’d formed in years. It was all in tune with a general ‘This is why we can’t have nice things’ line. He wasn’t sure if Gabriel would call it guilt or shame, but it soured Sam’s stomach and turned his dreams dark as pitch. 

He called it quits around dawn and forced himself out of bed to the cafe. Gabriel was nowhere to be seen, but Sam hadn’t thought he’d make it. He took their small table to themselves and read Auden’s sweetly cynical poetry as a balm. The silence took on a different quality with no one to share it. He finished faster than usual and made his way back to the house as though dogs nipped at his heels. 

Back at home, he threw open all the windows on the lower floor enticing the spring air inside. He got another empty box from the garage and made his way around the house, tossing in lipsticks, receipts from 7-11, a mug with a dancing devil painted on the side, financial magazines, costume jewelry, empty syringes, pill bottles, shopping lists written in shaky longhand, a hairbrush and three packets of clove cigarettes. The detritus of a life lived too hard and too quickly. He taped it shut and shoved it into the empty half of the closet where her clothes had been. 

“So long and thanks for all the fish.” He muttered to it, sliding the closet door shut. 

It didn’t feel cathartic, but there was a finality to it. All that remained of Ruby in the house now were the careful folders and legal pads of falsified evidence locked away in their safe. He’d deal with them eventually, fine with that day being a hazy forever away. 

He took Auden out onto the front stoop and read under the sun’s increasing warmth. 

“Hey.” Gabriel settled next to him on the step. He wore mirrored sunglasses and hadn’t bothered to shave, but otherwise he seemed alright. 

“Hey.” Sam bumped his shoulder with his own companionably. 

“Too damn bright.” Muttered Gabriel. “What you reading?” 

“Poetry.” 

“Yeah? Who?” 

“Auden.” 

“Good. I can take him small doses. Read to me?” 

“Are you serious?” Sam studied him, but could find no trace of laughter on Gabriel’s face. 

“Got a headache ready to crack open my skull, so tv and reading to myself are out. Entertain me, monkey.” 

“You’re so charming.” Sam snorted, then flipped a few pages and read as evenly as he could, 

“ _Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,_  
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,  
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum  
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come. 

_Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead_  
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,  
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,  
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves. 

_He was my North, my South, my East and West,_  
My working week and my Sunday rest,  
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;  
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong. 

_The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;_  
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;  
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.  
For nothing now can ever come to any good.”

“Well. That’s depressing as hell.” Two fingers slid under the nose rest of Gabriel’s sunglasses, rubbing there. “Jesus, Sam. You trying to make me feel worse?” 

“It’s my favorite.” Sam shrugged. 

“Of course it is.” Gabriel huffed out a sigh. “Because there isn’t enough tragedy in your own life, you have to bring other people’s into it.” 

“It’s sad, yeah, I guess. But it’s also beautiful. It can feel like that. Grief. Loss.” He rubbed a hand over his own forgotten stubble. “My Dad was like that when my Mom died. Lost his compass entirely.” 

“Take me inside, make me something decent to eat and put on some music that is neither tragic or likely to make my headache worse.” Gabriel commanded. “Because if you say one more word, I’m going to have to commit suicide on your behalf and that would be a terrible loss for everyone.” 

Laughing, Sam stood and put out his hand. Gabriel took it and got up to his feet. They’d never ventured into Sam’s side of the house before and he had a pleasantly normal moment worrying over it’s appearance. 

“Little empty in here, isn’t it?” Gabriel said vaguely, sagging into one of the kitchen chairs. He kept his sunglasses on. 

“I cleared out a lot of her things.” Sam shrugged, looking around as if for the first time. Even with Ruby’s stuff still tucked in at every corner, they hadn’t really had much. A lot of books maybe, some furniture. It was the opposite of Gabriel’s side, all crammed full of food, pillows and literature until it groaned at the seams. 

“Good idea. Exorcism.” Gabriel mumbled. “Food. Music. Or else death.” 

“You are such a damn diva.” But Sam turned the stereo into an oldies station and set about scrambling eggs with a vengeance. 

They ate with Aretha Franklin crooning at them. The breeze rustled tree leaves into painting shadow patterns over the table. While Sam washed the dishes, he was aware of Gabriel getting up and taking the measure of the place. He tried not to interfere, keeping his attention on dish soap and hot water. 

“Sam?” Gabriel called just as he was finishing the last glass. His tone was choked and a little angry. 

“What?” Sam set the glass aside. 

“Who is this?” 

Puzzled, Sam walked into the living room, drying his hands on his jeans. The sunglasses had been discarded and Gabriel cradled one of the new frames in his hands. He tilted it enough that Sam could make out Dean and Cas sitting on the bench. 

“That’s my brother and his partner, Cas. Told you about them.” A thunderstorm seemed to be forming behind Gabriel’s eyes. “Why?” 

“Cas.” Gabriel repeated. “That’s a nickname.” 

“Yeah, Dean gives them to everyone. Calls me Sammy, drives me crazy like I’m still a little kid. Why?” 

“What’s it short for?” 

“You’re freaking me out.” Sam warned. “He’s got a bit of a weird name actually. Castiel.” 

“Fucking hell.” Gabriel choked. “He’s what...thirty-one? Thirty-two?” 

“Uh. I think so? Something like that.” Sam stared at the hardline of Gabriel’s lips. “You know him?” 

“Not anymore, clearly. I didn’t-” He cut himself off. “Does he talk about his family?” 

Castiel. Gabriel. Michael. God. Sam was such an idiot. 

“All the time. He had a great foster family, the Novaks, but he remembered everything about where he came from. He kept in touch with some of the others. If you want to know where they-”

“One hell of a coincidence, don’t you think?” Gabriel set the frame down gently. 

“If you believe in that sort of thing.” Sam frowned. “I mean. Fate, you know?” 

“I’m not debating free will with you, Winchester. I’m talking about my goddamn family!” Gabriel hit the wall with the flat of his hand and for a moment it seemed as if the whole house shook. “Tell me you didn’t know.” 

“I didn’t!” Sam swore, holding up both hands defensively. “I would have said if I even had a suspicion!” 

Gabriel looked at him, long and hard like he could read the truth out of Sam’s bones if he looked long enough. Whatever he saw seemed to satisfy him and some of the anger dropped away. It left him looking small again, defeated and tired. 

“He’s a good man.” Sam shoved his hands in his pockets. “He didn’t go into the army, but he fought for us. Me and Dean and Jess and Mom. After the case was over, he even left the FBI, said he couldn’t take the politics anymore.” 

“He’s a photographer.” Gabriel turned back to the mantle. “You said your brother’s partner was a photographer.” 

“He’s good too. Mostly does weddings and stuff to make money, but I think he’s had a few gallery shows too.” He pointed to the light saturated pictures. “Those are his.” 

Gabriel picked up one picture. It was Dean from behind in autumn, standing in a grove of trees illuminated as if a thick white aura hung around him. 

“And your brother...he treats him well?” 

“Yes.” Sam said firmly because the sky was blue, ice was cold and Dean loved Cas. The sure facts of life. “They’ve got a bit of unconventional setup, but it works for them.” 

“Unconventional how?” 

Sam was damn sure that Dean wouldn’t want him talking about his private life to someone he’d never met, but Sam didn’t care right then. He’d take the slap upside the head later. 

“Well, Dean is straight and Cas isn’t interested at all. Says he was born that way. But they’re insane about each other, have been right from the beginning. It’s always been a grand romance. Even bought a house together not long ago and as far as I know, they share a bed.” Sam shrugged. “Unconventional.” 

“Cas was always strange.” Gabriel set the picture down gently. “He was the quiet one. Used to slip in and out of rooms, you’d never even know he’d been there. Spine like steel though. Never let any of us intervene for him in a fight or make his life easier.” 

“Then he hasn’t changed much. I can talk to him, if you want. Maybe you could-” 

“I need to think.” 

Gabriel left so abruptly that it was nearly as if he’d disappeared altogether. Sam went back to his dishes. Then washed the countertops because they were filthy. And if they were clean, might as well do the window sill and give the floor a quick mop. 

By the time Gabriel came back late in the evening with a bag of takeout in hand, the entire house was cleaner than it had ever been before. A faint scent of lemon lingered on every surface and Sam had discovered stains of such mysterious origins that he only hoped bleach would kill whatever unnatural life had breed in them. 

“You’re the best housewife a man could want.” Gabriel said dryly, raising an eyebrow at Sam’s bright yellow gloves. 

“It needed to be done. You finished freaking out now?” 

“Not even close, but I’m done freaking out in private.” He laid out an enormous container of wanton soup. “Now eat before it goes cold.” 

“Let me call.” Sam begged when the last fortune cookie had gone the way of the dinosaurs. “You have no idea...Cas would want to know you’re alive at least.” 

“He has to hate me.” Gabriel shook his head. “They all must...I just left them. God only knows what the system did to them and I could have taken them.” 

“Right because you were in such good shape right then to look after four kids. Dean tried that with just me and we nearly killed each other.” Sam snorted. “Maybe you should have kept tabs, maybe you were a coward, but now you have to decide if you’re going to go on being one.” 

“You’re the worst motivational speaker ever, you know that right?” 

“Gabriel.” 

“Fine. Make the call before I change my mind.” 

He called Dean first. It seemed like the right thing to do. 

“Hey, what’s up?” Dean picked up after the first ring. 

“You got a minute?” 

“For you? Thirty seconds.” 

“Ha. Ha.” Sam rolled his eyes. “Look, you know my neighbor?” 

“The one you’re pining after like a thirteen year old girl?” 

“I am not! How do you even know that?” Sam looked despairingly at the phone. He hadn’t talked to Dean more than twice since the conversation about the soup and as far as he could remember he hadn’t even mentioned Gabriel. 

“Sammy, Sammy, Sammy.” Dean tsked. “When will you learn? I know you better than you know yourself. Always have. Always will.” 

That was.... bizarrely comforting. 

“You’re an asshole. Anyway, turns out? He’s one of Castiel’s long lost big brothers.” 

There was dead silence over the line for a long second. Then Dean said, very darkly: 

“Which one?” 

“Gabriel. He’s the third eldest, I think?” Sam glanced at Gabriel, who nodded reluctantly. “The one that got Cas and the others out of the house.” 

“Oh. The one who’s only kind of a colossal dick.” 

“That’s...fair. He recognized Cas from one of the pictures at my house. He lost track of the kids after CPS took them. Do you think Cas would want to talk to him?” 

“I know that he would.” Dean said it like it was a horrible failing of some kind. “He’ll probably even forgive him for abandoning him. You know how Cas is. But I swear to God if he breaks Cas’ heart even a little, I will kill him.” 

“I’ll convey that threat.” Sam sighed. “Tell you what, you tell him the news and he can call my cell if he wants to, ok? We’ll be here.” 

“Ok.” Dean’s reluctance was clear, but Sam knew he wouldn’t keep something like this from Cas. “It’s a weird coincidence though.” 

“Fate.” Sam shrugged.

“Such a bitch.” Dean agreed and hung up. 

“So...movie?” Sam suggested. 

“Nothing is going to make time actually speed up.” Gabriel dropped his face into his hands. 

“Sitting here in agonized silence won’t help either.” 

They settled on poker, both of them cheating and teaching each other new tricks. It didn’t make time move faster, but it did keep Gabriel from sinking any lower in his chair. By the time Sam’s phone played the opening lines of ‘Wayward Son’, they were making plans to shake down some regulars at Rocco’s. 

“Hello?” Sam picked up. 

“Sam.” Cas said. “Is my brother there?” 

“Yeah. Do you want to-” 

“Give him the phone.” 

Sam gave the phone wordlessly to Gabriel, then retreated up the stairs taking his laptop with him. He sat down on the bed, planning on catching up on yesterday’s missed work e-mails. The old blank document still minimized on his task bar caught his attention. He opened it, tapped his fingers idly against the keys for a second then started to write, 

_“Dad’s missing, Sam. Went on a hunting trip and didn’t come back.”_

The words poured out of him, coming from a deep well in the pit of his chest and the block of emotion in his throat. It wasn’t the way he’d lived it with monsters and demons trickling in, events jumbled up and thrown together a different way. It still felt true though, pain and blood and sitting in the passenger seat of the Impala with the window rolled down. The story sucked him in, absorbed all of his attention until his fingers ached from typing. 

“Hey.” Gabriel leaned in the doorway, his appearance startling Sam half out of his skin. His eyes were red-rimmed. 

“How’d it go?

“It went.” The phone landed with a soft thud next to Sam, followed by Gabriel, who landed face first, words muffled into the comforter. “He doesn’t hate me.” 

“Cas doesn’t really do hate.” 

“He wants to see me.” 

“That’s good.” Sam wondered if he could get away with stroking Gabriel’s hair, but decided against it. Though it was right there and invitingly gold in the lamplight. “Isn’t it?” 

Moving to prop his chin up on one arm, Gabriel snorted,

“I didn’t want to see any of them. It was better when it was all far off and I could pretend it was someone elses’ life. If I see Cas, I have to see the rest of them.” 

“Why? Cas isn’t close to any of them. Sometimes they send cards for birthdays, but he’s not attached. I don’t think he’d care one way or another.” 

“He’ll tell them though and my cover will be blown. I’ll have to deal with Mike and who knows, maybe Luc will even turn up out of the woodwork.” 

“I think you’re borrowing trouble. If you ask him not to tell, he won’t. He’s got just as much reason as you not to want to make contact with those two.” 

Gabriel picked at a loose thread on the comforter, winding it around his finger until the tip turned an angry red. Leaving him to it, Sam started typing again. He was nearly to his first drink of demon blood when Gabriel spoke again, 

“You really believe in fate?” 

“Yes.” His fingers stilled on the keys. “I mean, I believe in free will too. Did you ever read A Wrinkle in Time?” 

“No.” 

“You should, you’d like it. Anyway, there’s a bit where some powerful beings explain to some kids what fate is like, ‘You're given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself. What you say is completely up to you.’” He hit save, closed the laptop and set it aside. “That’s how I think of it.” 

“But you don’t believe in God.” 

“No.” 

“So who provides the form?” 

“I don’t know.” 

“You don’t?” 

“I don’t have all the answers and no one ever said my personal cosmology had to make sense. No one’s really does when you start to pick at it. We have this collection of thoughts and patchwork beliefs that get us through the day.” 

“My personal cosmology is very well thought out, thanks.” Gabriel said firmly. 

“Sure. The one you tell me about. But what you really think when the day is too long and your back up against the wall? I bet it makes no sense at all.” 

“Stop talking.” Gabriel said firmly, dropping his face back into the covers. “I am sick to death of your voice.” 

“You’re free to leave anytime you want, you know.” 

But Gabriel didn’t leave and after a while, started up an argument about destiny that lasted well into the night with no satisfaction on either end. They both fell asleep in the middle of it, still dressed and over the covers. 

Sam woke up with Gabriel’s face mashed into his stomach, his left arm thrown around Sam’s middle and one leg thrown carelessly over Sam’s thigh. Sam stayed in bed, running his thumb over the back of Gabriel’s neck and smiling at the ceiling until his cheeks hurt. 

“Oh god,” Gabriel groaned against Sam’s t-shirt, “please tell me that you are Scarlett Johansson.” 

“Nope.” Sam’s grin didn’t dim a fraction. “Welcome to casa Winchester. My bed is your bed.” 

“You let me sleep in my shoes? You’re a terrible friend.” 

“I fell asleep while you were still neck deep in lecturing me on Hobbes.” Sam laughed. “So shoes are your fault.” 

“Make me coffee.” Gabriel commanded, the arm he had around Sam’s waist tightening. 

“I can do caffeine or I can be a teddy bear. Both at the same time is asking a little too much.” 

“Don’t move. You make an astonishingly good pillow.” Gabriel said through a yawn, nose digging sharply between Sam’s ribs. 

They drowsed together for another half- hour or so. Eventually Gabriel let go of Sam to roll onto his back to stretch until something cracked in his spine. He sagged back against the mattress with a grunt. 

“Coffee.” He demanded. 

“Please.” Sam prompted to see what he would say. He got a lazy middle finger salute and Sam laughed all the way down the stairs. 

Gabriel went back to his side of the house for a shower, but he turned back up like a bad penny as soon as he’d finished. 

“Let’s go out.” He demanded, rousing Sam up from the couch and his laptop. “Do something.” 

“Like what?” 

“I don’t know. What do normal people do on a Sunday?” 

“Church. Brunch. Ride bikes? I don’t know.” 

“No. No and definitely not.” 

“I’ve never been to the aquarium.” 

“There’s an aquarium?” 

“Yeah. The New England Aquarium? It’s kind of a big deal. Haven’t you gone there on field trips or something?” 

“Budget cuts.” Gabriel shrugged. “Local trips only since I started working here.” 

“Fish it is then.”

The place was packed with strollers, screaming kids and patient parents filling every inch of the spiral walkway. Sam barely noticed it. He leaned in over the penguin enclosure, watching the birds go from awkward land animals to graceful swimmers. 

“They have amazing endurance.” Sam told Gabriel, whose attention flew from exhibit to exhibit, alighting at Sam’s side for a moment here and there. “The males will huddle over the eggs in the darkest winter for weeks while the females get food.” 

“You watch too much Discovery.” Gabriel tsked, but he glanced over at the penguins anyway. “It is impressive how far life will go to survive.” 

“Yeah. Find anything good?” 

With a wicked smile, Gabriel dragged him off to the seals performing tricks for their trainers and then to the sharks circling their tanks with menacing grace. Sam stalled again by the jellyfish, watching the delicate canopies of their bodies pulse through the water. Gabriel settled next to him again, their fingers brushing against each other. 

“I got stung by one of those once.” Gabriel frowned at the tank. “Hurt like a bitch.” 

“Way to ruin the moment.” Sam laughed. 

“The moment was only in your Bronte sister soaked mind.” 

“Does that make you Rochester or Heathcliff?” 

“Neither. I’m the madwoman in the attic. Can we go do something non-aquatic?” 

They wound up walking randomly through the streets, passing plaques declaring historical monuments, skyscrapers and restaurants filled with tourists. They wound up in Quincy Market, buying fat cups of clam chowder. Gabriel mashed in three packets of oyster crackers to Sam’s gagging noises. 

“It’s already a potluck mess.” Gabriel laughed. “What difference does something crunchy make?” 

“Soup is not supposed to crunch.” 

“You’re too rigid, kid.” 

“I can’t even explain how wrong that statement is. You want to see the Paul Revere house?” 

“Yeah, ok.” 

Their slapdash tour of the city wore on both their feet. By the time they arrived back home, Sam was yawning. 

“That was fun.” He stood in front of his stoop, rocking a little on his feet. “We should hit the Fine Arts Museum next weekend.” 

“If you want.” Gabriel grinned at him. “I’ll bring my sharpie for corrections.” 

“Hilarious.” 

They were standing too close and Sam wondered what would happen if moved into that fractional distance between them. Probably flailing and havoc, he decided. Infinite resignation, he reminded himself. He was resigned. He was hopeful. 

He got so lost in thought that he almost missed Gabriel leaning up to brush a kiss over the corner of his mouth. 

“Uh...” Sam blinked. 

“You take as much time as you need with that one.” Gabriel patted him gently on the chest. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” 

“Ok?” Sam watched Gabriel retreat into his side of the house, then looked up at the star filled sky. “What just happened?” 

The stars had no answers, so he went inside and fell asleep still puzzled. At the cafe the next morning, Gabriel favored him with a smile then turned his attention to The Once and Future King. Sam hadn’t bothered to bring a book. He spent the entirety of their breakfast studying the planes of Gabriel’s face and the movement of his hands. 

“You’re making me blush.” Gabriel informed him without the slightest hint of a flush on his face when they started their walk back. 

“Did you kiss me last night or have I started hallucinating?” 

“I kissed you.” Gabriel confirmed, not even glancing at Sam. “Is that a problem?” 

“No. It’s definitely not a problem. Just...why?” 

“Why do people generally kiss other people? How have you gotten through life without knowing these things?” There was a full blown laugh in Gabriel’s eyes. 

“I thought you were straight.” 

“Slander. I defy definition.” 

“You don’t even like me!” Sam groaned. 

“You keep saying that like it’s true.” Shaking his head, Gabriel opened his mailbox. “I swear, you’ve got worse self-esteem than a teenage girl alone at the prom.” 

“I didn’t go to the prom.” He said, then wrinkled his nose. “Not because I didn’t have a date.” 

“Way to focus on the important things.” Gabriel did laugh at him now. “Go to work. I’m sure you’ll have pieced it together by the end of the day. You’re slow, but reasonably bright.” 

No one had noticed Sam’s adventure into playing hooky. The morning dragged by in briefs and billable hours. A reminder about his end of the week appointment with Nick pinged into his inbox and he grimaced at it. The office closed in around him and left him nothing but room to think. By one, he’d cleared all the most crucial items off his desk. Careful to leave the light on, his door closed and a general sense of being very busy to anyone who saw him, he felt good about sneaking out. 

He pulled out of the parking lot, jacket already tossed in the back and the window rolled down. When he reached Gabriel’s classroom, the kids were involved in a complicated craft project that required a lot of glue and too much glitter. Sam sat down in an empty chair next to the girl who’d asked him for a drawing. 

“Hi, Sam!” She said brightly. “My fingers are stuck together!” 

“Cool.” He beamed at her. “What are you making?” 

By the time Gabriel noticed him, Sam had already helped three kids with the petals for their paper flowers. 

“I think I would have remembered getting a new T.A.” 

“I took some personal time.” It sounded like the lie it was, but Sam didn’t care. 

“Mr. G! She pulled my hair!” Someone cried. Gabriel pointed a finger at Sam. 

“Stay.” 

“That was the plan.” Sam agreed and went back to executing a perfect curve with Elmer’s glue. 

Crafts melted into a belated afternoon snack, apple slices and milk. He discussed the merits of green apples over red with a boy missing both front teeth. Eventually, Sam had to concede that apples were generally depicted as red and therefore, the red ones were closer to the Platonic ideal of an apple. 

“Also the green ones are too sour.” The boy declared. 

“Sometimes a little sour is good.” 

Gabriel narrowed his eyes across the room as if he’d caught the remark and taken it personally. Sam waved cheerfully at him. 

“Sam,” one of the girls said seriously, “what about the yellow ones?” 

“Too crumbly.” He declared.

They all nodded in agreement. Really, children were much more reasonable than Sam had been led to believe. They also found Gabriel as appealing as Sam did, winding around his legs like stray cats and Gabriel somehow managed to never even miss a step let alone crash to the ground. It was an impressive ballet that went through clean up time and into some bizarre rhyming game that led right up to the loudspeaker announcing the arrival of buses. 

When the last child had had their bookbag adjusted on their shoulders and swept off down the hall, Gabriel turned to look at Sam expectantly. 

“Hi.” Sam smiled at him and felt only a little like a complete moron. 

“What are you doing here?” There wasn’t anger in the question or even much curiosity. It was more an opening and Sam was happy to take it. 

“I’ve been told that I’m slow and I was wondering if I could upgrade that to average speed if I kissed you before we had another accidental date.” He got up from the ludicrously tiny chair, his left knee cracking. “What do you think?” 

“I think you have to do it first before I consider it.” Gabriel stood in the center of a too colorful rug, a few specks of glitter on one cheek and a wary look in his eyes as Sam crossed the room. 

“You should have told me we were dating. I’m really good at dating when I know it’s going on.” Sam told him, crowding him up against a bulletin board. “Better at this though.” 

The kiss was meant to be soft and welcoming, a sort of new hello. It started off that way too. Sam’s hands found purchase around Gabriel’s waist. Their bodies swayed together and all sense of propriety disintegrated under the sheer lust that staggered through Sam. The kiss went open mouthed and demanding, low pleased noises escaping Gabriel’s throat at rough intervals. 

“You’re going to ruin me.” Sam panted into Gabriel’s mouth. 

“Burn you to the ground.” The threat lost something with the breathless way the words cascaded over Sam’s neck. Paper crinkled at Gabriel’s back, threatening to tear away. “Not here though.”

The two minute drive home took too long. Sam barely managed to keep the wheel steady as Gabriel watched him under heavy lidded eyes. Without discussion, they headed for Gabriel’s bedroom. With a surprisingly solid push, Gabriel sat Sam down on the edge of the before straddling his lap. His nimble thief fingers made short work of Sam’s buttons and skimmed his undershirt off. 

“Huh.” Gabriel ran his fingers over Sam’s stomach and chest. “Happy birthday to me.” 

“Could you sound more sleazy?” Sam grinned, tugging at Gabriels clothes with equal enthusiasm if somewhat less success. 

“I could.” Bending slightly, Gabriel’s mouth closed around Sam’s earlobe in a sharp bit that went straight to his groin. “But I think I’d rather just show you.” 

Redoubling his siege against Gabriel’s shirt, Sam let out a soft frustrated groan. It had been long years since he’d had sex with another man. College experiments in drunken hazes were not good predictors for sober, well considered encounters in adulthood. That he had missed the hard planes of another man’s chest or the feel of stubble scraping over his skin had never occurred to Sam. When Gabriel slid off the bed and down to his knees, Sam made his peace with this unknown part of himself. With a few well placed wiggles, he aided the removal of his pants and underwear. Gabriel caressed his thighs for an obscene amount of time, lavishing kisses on Sam’s stomach. Sam wasn’t inclined to rush him. He was older now, less impatient and the pleasure of touch after being deprived of it was heady all on its own. 

“I sat down under the shadow of his great delight and his fruit was sweet to my taste.” Gabriel mouthed into the sensitive skin over one hipbone. 

“The Bible? Right now?” Sam groaned. “Are you serious?”

“Blow upon my garden,” he could actually feel the shape of Gabriel’s smile, wide and lascivious, “that the spices thereof may flow out. Let my beloved come into his garden, and eat his pleasant fruits.”

The inhalation Sam took to deliver his rejoinder was lost in heartfelt moan as Gabriel relented and took him into his mouth. The tongue that had fenced with Sam’s for months proved just as clever as Gabriel’s fingers. It wrung Same dry of sound, leaving him a writhing mess on the bed. He shook under the unrelenting assault and came with a choked scream. When he’d finished, Gabriel bit at his inner thigh sucking a dark mark onto quiescent flesh. It would chafe there, rubbing against the inseam of Sam’s pants as he walked. 

“Come here.” Sam demanded hoarsely. 

Gabriel obeyed, crawling over Sam and looming over his prone body with hooded, lustful eyes. 

“What will you let me do?” 

The question stirred the embers of Sam’s satisfied lust. 

“Anything.” He breathed out. “For I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine.”

For an instant, Sam regretted the words. They had flown out of him as natural as any truth, but they were too soon. They would kill this tender tendril growing up between them. Then Gabriel’s eyes darkened and he leaned into kiss Sam, hard and solemn. When he withdrew it was only to look Sam in the eyes and say, 

“Where you go, I will go and where you stay, I will stay. Your people will be my people.” 

Sam spread his thighs wide in invitation, letting his body speak where words had finally failed him. The sex was still sex, messy and not easy as they learned each other’s bodies, but it took on a ritualistic quality. Gabriel spread Sam wide and opened him up with worship in his eyes. In return, Sam touched every inch of skin that he could reach as Gabriel shifted over him. He pressed his lips to Gabriel’s neck, shoulders, arms and fingers. They kept their eyes open as Gabriel sank into Sam’s body and though there was pain, Sam never cried out. He wanted all of it, the burn, the overfullness, the pressure and at last the slick, sparking pleasure of it. He watched Gabriel’s face with the intentness of a scholar with a new revelatory text. With care, Sam read his reddened lips, the flush spread over his cheekbones and the laugh lines around his eyes. 

“Please.” Sam pleaded without a single idea what he was asking for. 

He only knew he wanted this, more of this. He wanted to cling to this moment in the darkness, keep its scent on his hands and taste on his tongue. Gabriel tightened his grip and sank down at an awkward angle to kiss him. 

“Talk to me.” Gabriel retreated, hands digging around Sam’s waist. “Want to hear you.”

“His mouth is most sweet,” Sam told him, his words broken up with moans as Gabriel increased his speed, “yea, he is altogether lovely. This is my beloved and this is my friend.” 

“More.” Gabriel demanded. 

“I am my beloved and his desire is toward me.” Sam’s memory was starting to fail him, the words melting away under the physical assault . “Ah, please, Gabriel, please...” 

His body wouldn’t allow a second orgasm so soon, but the lush pleasure of watching Gabriel fall apart buried in Sam’s body was a new and nearly as satisfying joy. He memorized the arch of his back, the slick feel of his sweaty skin and the lovely aching noise he made as he came. 

They lay quietly together for a long time, their breathing ragged with laughter. When Sam nuzzled into Gabriel’s neck, he was swatted half-heartedly for his trouble. Cuddling came with new issues, discomfort clear in too many positions. After some experimentation, they settled with Sam lying on his side and Gabriel on his back, legs thrown over Sam’s thighs. 

“It’s hard to stick with the infinite resignation thing once the princess gives in, you know.” Sam carded his hand through Gabriel’s hair, pleased to find it silken between his fingers. 

“I am not a princess. In any sense and not just because of basic anatomical reasons.” 

“You’re kind of a diva, actually.” Sam grinned as Gabriel’s expression darkened into further annoyance. “But I mean it. You’ve weakened my whole bid to be a knight of faith here.”

“You didn’t need me for that.” He was serious again, voice tight. “I think you’ve always been one.” 

“You said I was yours.” Sam nuzzled his nose into Gabriel’s hair, a faint scent of sugar and cream rose unexpectedly to mix with the more typical human odors. “Your knight.” 

“Did I?” Gabriel’s grin spilled lazy and welcoming. “Hmm. Wonder what I was thinking.” 

“I should probably feel guilty about this.” Sam considered. “Are you worried I’m using you as a rebound?” 

“Mmm. Terrified.” Gabriel laughed. “You’ll probably run off and leave me for someone much hotter and younger when you get over your emotional distress.”

“I’m serious.” Whined Sam. “God, you never take me seriously.” 

“I take you very seriously.” Gabriel contradicted. “It’s why I can laugh. Once you’ve set your sights on something, it’s yours come hell or high water or impossible odds. That’s why you’re a knight of faith. You accept impossibility, but you don’t give a shit about it. You don’t care about much outside your goals. I’m not sure you even really see anything else.” 

“That’s funny.” Sam huffed. “Nearly exactly what that red head said about you, except about people. You know. The one teacher who actually liked you? What was her name?” 

“Hmm..the red head? Did she? Not very kind of her. Probably true though.” 

“Does that mean we’re bad people?” 

“Maybe. Do you feel like a bad person?” 

Sam settled a hand over Gabriel’s chest, the faint thump of his heart underneath Sam’s palm. Over the last two years Sam had made bad decision after bad decision while trying to do something that had seemed right. The entire time, under his righteous anger and fierce rotted love of Ruby, he’d felt wrong about it. He never gave himself time to examine that feeling, only pushed passed it with his cause forward most in his mind. 

There was no cause now. Only a good, if broken man, lying in his arms. Because Gabriel was essentially good, Sam thought. He liked the world, enjoyed its riches and taught its young. Maybe he’d been a coward, a thief and a liar, but he wasn’t any of those things any more. Sam could work with that. 

“No.” He answered finally. “Not good or bad. Just...human. Trying my best. You?” 

“Sometimes, I do. But not today.” Gabriel turned his head so that their noses touched. “Today, it would be impossible to feel anything less than angelic. I must have been good to be so rewarded, don’t you think?” 

“Maybe in a past life?” Sam teased then kissed him to stop whatever smartass comment might be coming next. 

Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday melted away. Sam didn’t run away from the office again, but his mental presence could charitably be described as ‘dubious’. He spent several happy hours replaying their time in bed, on the couch and during one particularly motivated attempt, against the bathroom door.

He didn’t even think about his Friday meeting with Nick until the night before. Even then he was too blissed out to think on it with any clarity. On Friday morning, he realized he probably should have been preparing something. Or at least done more than pick up a notepad and pen, before drifting upstairs like an unmoored balloon. The secretary didn’t seem phased by him, so maybe he still looked the part of the competent lawyer. 

“Mr. Scratch will see you now.” She said with a bright smile. 

“Thanks.” He couldn’t remember her name, he realized. Hadn’t he talked to her a few times? 

He pushed open the heavy oak door. Nick’s office was laid out with gracious use of the space. A beautiful dark wood desk set in front glass windows. Nick himself sat at the desk in a dark grey suit and silk blue tie. 

“Sam!” Nick grinned at him as he settled into the plush guest chair. “How are you? You look much better.” 

“I’m feeling much better, thank you.” Sam set his notepad over his knees. 

“I read over some of the briefs you’ve written since you got back. Excellent work.” 

“I try my best.” He lied. 

“That’s not why we’re here today though.” Nick leaned forward. “I want to talk to you about Lilith.” 

“Ok.” The sharp hot spike of adrenaline, missing for weeks, ran into Sam’s bloodstream. “What about her?” 

“I wanted to say thank you. I know the death wasn’t exactly your doing but close enough to count, I think.” Nick leaned even farther forward and Sam could smell something rotted and fetid in the air. “Truth be told, she was an ambitious bitch. Your little girlfriend only egged her on. With her gone, I have a lot more room to grow. I think she was trying to keep you down because she knew how much I favored you. Those harpies are out of the way now, Sam. It’s just me and you and we can do many extraordinary things together.” 

“Excuse me?” The question wasted a few precious seconds. Seconds Sam used to go back over all the data Ruby had ever fed him. What if it wasn’t all fake? What if this man was the one behind it all? Behind the arson and the slow destruction of Sam’s family? Would there be evidence? Could he prove it? 

“I want you to consider taking on a larger caseload.” Nick was no longer leaning halfway across the desk. He was settled back in his chair as if none of the conversation had happened. “There’s a partnership in this for you, if you’re willing to work for it.” 

“Of course, sir.” He licked his lips.

“You’re dismissed.” Nick turned back to his computer and Sam got shakily to his feet. He was almost to do the door, when Nick spoke again. “Oh, one more thing. Do say hello to Gabriel for me?” 

Sam didn’t bother to reply. He slammed the door on his way out, ice water in his veins. Who named their kids after angels? Choose Gabriel, Michael and Castiel? Luc, Gabriel has said what Sam realized now was a nickname with bereaved bitterness. Lucifer. Old Scratch. Nick. It wasn’t even that good of a cover. So thinly veiled that he must want to be discovered. 

Sam let out a grunt of frustration, hands in his hair. The secretary looked up at him, surprise wild on her face. Why didn’t he know her name? His head ached, swimming with possibilities. 

“What’s your name?” He asked her and she looked mutely back at him. 

“You should go.” She said shakily and he nodded. 

“Damn right.” 

By the time he’d gotten back to his office, Sam had pieced a little of it together. He could sense the yawning maw of obsession cracking open at his feet. He could have his revenge. True, bloody revenge this time. It would be playing chess against a man with unknown power. A man who had once been his lover’s brother and who, Sam had no doubt, was still beloved by said brother. 

And yet, there was this other, deeper problem. This problem of names. Because he didn’t know Nick’s secretary or Gabriel’s co-worker with the red hair. He didn’t know the names of his colleagues or the children in Gabriel’s class. The other patrons of their cafe weren’t even fully realized faces to him. 

He fumbled for his phone. 

“Sam?” Gabriel asked tightly. “What? I’m working.” 

“Tell me the name of one person you care about. Beside me or Cas. Anyone.” 

“Kali.” Gabriel said instantly. “My ex. I’ll tell you about her sometime.” 

“Have you seen her recently?” 

There was a long pause, “No. Is this a jealousy thing?” 

“Think, please. Have you seen her? Can you think of anyone else?” 

“What’s this about?” Gabriel demanded. “What are you getting at?” 

“It’s tests. It’s always been tests.” Sam slumped down into his chair. “Your crazy evil brother is in charge my law firm. I think he just threatened me. And I know what I’m supposed to do. I’m supposed to stay here and stand up to him. Keep saying no while I find a way to bring him down. Or say yes or something. But it’s a test, isn’t it? For you and me.” 

“What kind of test?” And Gabriel wasn’t questioning him. He sounded genuinely curious. 

“We weren’t always good people. We’ve made mistakes, right? What if this is us trying not to make the same mistakes again?” 

“I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about.” 

“Liar. Tell me the name of the redheaded teacher. The one who likes you.” There was a silence on the other end. “They aren’t real to us. They’re shadows. This is like a puppet theater and I know my lines. But I’m so tired. Aren’t you tired?” 

“Yes.” Gabriel admitted quietly. 

“I’m done, I think.” Sam rubbed the heel of his hand over his forehead. “Can you meet me back at the house?” 

“I can’t just leave in the middle of the school day.” 

“Tell me the name of one child in your class and you can stay until the end of the day.” 

“What the hell kind of thing is that to say? Have you lost your mind?” 

“One child.” Sam repeated. 

“Well there’s-” Gabriel started then fell silent. 

“I’ll see you in ten.” 

He didn’t bother making it look like he was still in his office. He just grabbed up the few things that mattered to him in the cluttered space and left. On the way out, he threw off his tie and jacket. The sun was out, hot and steady on his skin. 

He reached the house before Gabriel and he settled on the stoop, phone held loosely in his hand, neck bowed to the warmth beating down on his back. He should feel panicked, he thought. He should be running scared or making plans. Instead, a sort of peace settled over him. 

When Gabriel pulled in, climbing out from his hideous lime green car, that peace only grew deeper. The sure movements of his lover’s body, the way he sat down pressing in next to Sam as if it was the only place he wanted to be, slotted the final bit into place. 

“We could fight.” Gabriel said, his head resting against Sam’s shoulder. “We could put him down and make sure he never hurt another person again. That would be the good thing, right? The morally correct thing.”

“Maybe. If we were heroes. But I’m tired.” Sam rubbed his cheek over Gabriel’s hair. “At the very end of Don Quixote, his delusion fails. He’s dying and he renounces everything. His faith failed him. That’s why I could never laugh at it. I wanted him to keep faith. It felt cheap that he lost it so near to the end.” 

“Isn’t that what you’re doing? Renouncing?” 

“No.” Sam kissed the place where Gabriel’s hair went thin before meeting his forehead. “My faith is in you. Not giants or dragons. I see you. You’re solid under my hands.” 

“So what then? What do you want us to do?” 

Us, For the first time, Sam realized that maybe his wellspring of faith wasn’t all an infinite giving outward. Maybe Gabriel returned that faith. Trusted him to guide them outward into the world. He would have to be worthy of it, he knew. That seemed like a much greater task. 

“I’m making the call.” He decided. 

There were only three contacts in Sam’s phone. How had he never noticed that before? Cas. Dean. Gabriel. No acquaintances or business contacts. Not even a delivery service. He chose Dean’s name and watched the phone connect before putting it to his ear. 

“Sam? Everything ok?” And how had Sam missed that note of curiosity in Dean’s voice every time he called. The question underneath his question. 

“Yeah, I’m good.” He kissed Gabriel’s forehead again. “We’re ready to come home.” 

“CAS!’ Dean called out, splintering through Sam’s ear. “Get the car warmed up! Sam? We’ll be there as soon as we can. Pack your bags. Halla-fucking-lujah!” 

“Dean?” Sam asked tentatively, but the line had already gone dead. “Uh. I think they’re coming to get us.” 

They had to separate to pack. It didn’t take Sam long. Some clothes, his laptop with his odd story still open on the desktop, a few books and the photos that Cas had sent him. The documents he’d avoided looking at with all of Ruby’s spidery accusatory handwriting went into the sink. One match and they went up in flames. By the time he got the the smoke alarm to stop screaming, they were only black ash at the bottom of the stainless steel basin. Meaningless bits of carbon that floated easily on a stream of water down the drain. 

“Did you start a bonfire in here?” Gabriel wrinkled his nose, appearing at the door with his messenger bag draped over his torso and a suitcase in one hand. 

“Cleansing ritual.” Sam ushered him back outside, locking the house up behind them. 

It should have taken Dean and Cas days to get there. Sam wasn’t surprised that they rolled up only minutes after he’d tucked the keys under the doormat. There might be another resident coming and he figured it was only polite. 

The Impala gleamed in the afternoon sun. Sam rested his hand on her overheated chassis, the pings of her cooling engine as soothing as Gabriel’s heartbeat under his palm. 

“Sam.” Dean launched himself from the car and into Sam’s waiting embrace. “Thought it was going to take you forever, bitch.” 

They hugged hard. Sam closed his eyes, deeply relieved that Dean felt just as real as Gabriel did. He smelled like leather, french fries and the cedar note of his cheap aftershave. 

“You could have told me, jerk.” 

“Nah. Cas said you had to do the heavy lifting yourself.” Dean pulled away, only far enough to search Sam’s face. “Damn it’s good to see you.” 

“Yeah. It’s good to be seen.” 

As one they turned their attention to Gabriel and Castiel. They were standing a few feet apart, speaking so quietly that it sounded like another language entirely. Dean watched them impassively, then glanced back at Sam. 

“You ready?” 

“More than.” 

They packed the trunk, shifting Cas’ equipment and Dean’s arsenal to make room for Sam and Gabriel’s bags. It took a little doing and when they were finished, Gabriel and Cas were already in the car. In the backseat. 

“Cas doesn’t want shotgun?” Sam asked, a little bewildered. 

“Nah. He’s got stuff to catch up on, right?” Dean shrugged. “Anyway. Always been your place, hasn’t it?” 

The leather seat accepted him back with a soft creak and a sigh. His feet tucked up under the dashboard as if they had never left. In the rearview mirror, Cas and Gabriel tilted their heads together speaking in more of that slurry, guttural whisper. With a blindingly wide smile, Dean turned the key and the car roared into life. 

Hotel California blared out from the speakers, telling Sam that you could check out, but never leave. 

“Really?” He turned to glare at Dean, who laughed. 

The radio clicked, sputtered then wafted into something acoustic and sweet. 

They’ve all gone to look for America... 

“Damnit, Cas.” Dean looked back accusingly, but Cas only stared mildly back without response. “No more folk. I told you.” 

The music didn’t change, not as they pulled out of the driveway and out of the suburbs. Not as the highway gave way to an impossibly empty road lined with fields of wheat and corn. The radio poured forth sweet guitar and harmonies that matched the sun streaming through the windshield. 

Gabriel draped himself over the back of Sam’s seat. Dean and Cas were locked in some kind of staring contest in the rearview mirror, a smile tugging at the edges of Dean’s lips. The music danced through the wheat and the wind ruffled through Sam’s hair. He leaned further back, so he could look at Gabriel’s profile. In a trick of light, his lover’s eyes glinted gold. 

“This is heaven.” Sam said with a laugh. “This. Right here.” 

“Once there was a knight of faith, named C.S. Lewis.” Gabriel murmured in Sam’s ear. “He wrote an entire series of books filled with allegories about his religion. Do you know how he ended those stories?” 

“I have come home at last!” Sam replied, his happiness an almost palpable thing as he reached up to twine a hand in Gabriel’s hair. “This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now...Come further up, come further in!”

With a swift twist Dean shifted gears and the Impala surged a little faster down the road that led to everywhere.

**Author's Note:**

> You may have noticed that this fic isn't tagged AU. Draw your own conclusions there. I have a Dean and Castiel B-Side idea in mind for this, if enough people enjoy it. 
> 
> Oh and if you like to know when I post and also enjoy random reblogs of pretty pictures, you can follow me on the tumblr: http://dragonmuse.tumblr.com/


End file.
